The impact of pre-transplant serum C-reactive protein (CRP) level on the outcome of reduced-intensity conditioning allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (RIC allo-SCT) is unclear. This study retrospectively investigated 78 patients who underwent RIC allo-SCT between 2005 and 2013. The conditioning regimen consisted of fludarabine and melphalan with/without total body irradiation. The 3-year overall survival of high CRP (43.6 % of all patients) patients was significantly worse than that of normal CRP patients in whom CRP was ≤0.3 mg/dl (26.7 vs. 74.1 %, P < 0.001). Both the CRP level before transplantation and disease risk status were independent prognostic factors for overall survival by multivariate analysis. CRP was not a significant predictor of NRM by multivariate analysis (hazard ratio 3.2, 95 % confidence interval 0.8-13.1, P = 0.100). These results suggest that measuring the CRP level before transplantation can be useful to predicting the outcome of RIC allo-SCT.
Keywords: Allogeneic stem cell transplantation; Reduced-intensity conditioning; Serum C-reactive protein.