Chronic graft versus host disease burden and late transplant complications are lower following adult double cord blood versus matched unrelated donor peripheral blood transplantation

Adult umbilical cord blood transplantation (CBT) has emerged as an important option for patients lacking matched related (MRD) and matched unrelated donors (MUD). We compared chronic GVHD (cGVHD) incidence, immunosuppression burden and late infections and hospitalizations in consecutive patients undergoing CBT ( n =51) versus peripheral blood MUD transplant ( n =57) at our center between June 2009 and April 2014. At 3 years post transplantation, the cumulative incidence (CI) of moderate to severe cGVHD was 44% following MUD versus 8% following CBT ( P =0.0006) and CI of any cGVHD was 68% following MUD versus 32% following CBT ( P =0.0017). Median time to being off immunosuppression among CB patients was 268 days versus not reached among MUD patients ( P