Key clinical point: Pretransplant cytoreductive therapy is not associated with improved outcomes in patients with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) who have undergone allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT).
Major finding: Five-year overall survival after diagnosis was 73.6% (95% confidence interval [CI], 70.3%-76.9%), 43.4% (95% CI, 39.2%-47.6%), and 46.9% (95% CI, 44.7%-49.1%) in the upfront transplantation (upfront), induction chemotherapy (CT), and hypomethylating agents alone (HMA) groups, respectively ( P = .033). Treatment-related mortality was 13.0% (95% CI, 11.4%-15.1%), 32.4% (95% CI, 30.1%-35.3%), and 28.4% (95% CI, 26.2%-30.3%) in the 3 groups, respectively ( P = .028).
Study details: A total of 157 MDS patients were categorized into 3 groups based on the pretransplantation therapy: upfront (n=54), CT (n=66), and HMA (n=37). In addition, 124 patients underwent allo-HSCT.
Disclosures: This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Research and Development Program in Key Areas of Guangdong Province, Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou, and Clinical Research Start-up Project of Southern Medical University. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
Source: Chen Y et al. Int J Cancer. 2021 Apr 25. doi: 10.1002/ijc.33608 .