Background
Severe graft versus host disease (GVHD) is the main reason for non-relapse mortality following allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). We investigated the serum protein profiles of patients who had undergone HCT to identify predictive biomarkers of severe acute GVHD (aGVHD).
Conclusion
Higher sVCAM- levels at baseline and on day + 14 in HCT patients could be a significant predictive biomarker of severe aGVHD.
Methods
Serum samples were collected for 30 patients from day - 7 to day + 14 of HCT. The serum levels of plasma beta2-microglobulin (β2-MG), soluble vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (sVCAM-1), platelet factor 4, and TNFSF-14 were measured by ELISA as potential biomarkers following 310 cytokine profiling array.
Results
The median age of the study patients was 53.5 years (range, 19-69). All grade and grade 2-4 aGVHD developed in 21 (70.0%) and 17 (56.7%) patients, respectively. Compared with their baseline levels on day - 7, β2-MG and sVCAM-1 were significantly increased on day + 14 of the HCT procedure (P = 0.028 and P < 0.001, respectively). Patients with a grade 2-4 severe aGVHD showed a significantly higher sVCAM-1 level at baseline (day-7) and at day + 14, compared with the other group with a grade 1 aGVHD or no aGVHD (P = 0.028 and P = 0.035, respectively).