Pediatric hematopoietic cell transplantation: Longitudinal trends in body mass index and outcomes

Pediatric recipients of HCT may have a high susceptibility for overweight and obesity, and obesity may negatively impact post‐transplant mortality and survival. This is a single‐center retrospective analysis of 297 pediatric patients who received HCT between 2005 and 2018. Patients were classified as UW, NW, OW, or OB based on age‐adjusted BMI. A mixed‐effects linear regression model controlling for patient, disease, and transplant‐related characteristics was used to trend weight longitudinally. Comparisons were made between weight category and post‐transplant outcomes. In the pretransplant period, 5.4%, 54.5%, 22.2%, and 17.8% of patients were UW, NW, OW, and OB, respectively. Five years post‐transplantation, those numbers were 10.6%, 48.2%, 16.5%, and 24.7%. Overall, BMI increased 0.00094 ± 0.0001 kg/m2 each day post‐transplant (P