A comparison between regimens containing chemotherapy alone (busulfan and cyclophosphamide) and chemotherapy (V. RAPID) plus total body irradiation on marrow engraftment following allogeneic bone marrow transplantation.

The effect of two conditioning regimens given prior to allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (BMT) on the kinetics of engraftment were compared. 5 patients received busulfan and cyclophosphamide: 7 patients received daunorubicin, vincristine, cytosine arabinoside, methylprednisone and VM-26 plus total body irradiation (TBI). Bone marrow progenitors (BFU-E, CFU-E, CFU-GM, CFU-F) were assayed up to 3 months post-BMT. All progenitors were severely depressed in spite of peripheral blood recovery. There was no stromal recovery in any adult patient post-BMT. There was no significant difference in time to engraftment, or colony forming units, or between patients conditioned with chemotherapy alone or chemotherapy plus TBI. We were unable to detect effects of graft-versus-host disease or cytomegalic viral infection on bone marrow progenitors or peripheral blood recovery in this study.