Improved outcomes with bone marrow transplantation in aplastic anemia when using antithymocyte globulin in the conditioning regimen

Prevalence of chronic graft-versus-host disease (left) and Kaplan-Meier estimates of survival (right) in 78 patients with aplastic anemia receiving HLA-identical bone marrow transplants and GVHD prophylaxis with methotrexate and cyclosporine; 39 of the patients were conditioned with cyclophosphamide and ATG (current patients) and 39 were conditioned with cyclophosphamide alone (historical patients). The newer regimen was associated with a significant reduction in chronic GVHD and a significant improvement in eight-year survival (92 versus 72 percent).