Publications

Invasive candidiasis is a life-threatening infection associated with high morbidity, mortality and healthcare costs in both general and critical care settings. Timely diagnosis and adequate antifungal treatment are essential to improving patient outcomes and limiting unnecessary use of healthcare resources. This review explores the relationship between early Candida clearance with antifungal therapy, clinical outcomes, resistance patterns and ...

The EBMT recommends rabbit anti-thymocyte or anti-T-lymphocyte globulin (rATG/ATLG) as GVHD prophylaxis in matched sibling donor (MSD) allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT). However, discrepancies between recommendations and clinical practice were reflected in the EBMT survey. Therefore, we performed retrospective EBMT registry analysis from 2014 to 2021 to reinforce the real-world evidence context of rATG/ATLG impact on ...

BACKGROUND: Genetic predisposition plays a major role in the development of invasive pulmonary aspergillosis (IPA). The risk and course of IPA vary significantly among patients, yet continuously new genetic mechanisms that influence individual antifungal immune responses are being discovered. While genetic variability in interleukin (IL)-1 family cytokines is recognized as an important cause of disease susceptibility, it is unclear whether and ...

Reduced intensity conditioning (RIC) is usually used for patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT), particularly in the elderly or those with comorbidities. The impact of conditioning intensity on patients' outcome remains controversial with clinicians' subjective opinion/ experience remaining a major guide in choosing the intensity. Here, we compare RIC versus MAC in a large ...

BACKGROUND: Invasive mould infections (IMI) carry high morbidity and mortality. Conventional diagnostics-histopathology, culture and microscopy-rely on invasive sampling and lack sensitivity, particularly during early phases of infection. Rare and mixed mould infections are frequently diagnosed too late or missed. OBJECTIVES: To provide a narrative review of recent innovations in diagnosing IMIs, highlighting advances, identifying areas where ...

Selection of a suitable donor for allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HCT) has mainly relied on HLA matching and, to date, a matched sibling donor (MSD) remains the first choice. However, patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) are older and therefore tend to have older siblings. Haploidentical donors (HIDs) are easily available, and offspring are younger than siblings. As donor age has been associated with worse ...

We compared transplantation outcomes of AML patients with WT1 mutation (mWT1), identified by next-generation sequencing, to those of patients with wild-type WT1 AML (wtWT1). 703 patients were included, 50 with mWT1 and 653 with wtWT1. Patients with mWT1 were younger (median age: 45.6 vs. 56.4 years, p < 0.001), with a higher proportion of females (66% vs. 47.6%, p = 0.01), higher frequency of mutations in FLT3-ITD (38.3% vs. 21.7%, p = 0.01) ...

The impact of the number of induction cycles required to achieve first complete remission (CR1) on transplant outcomes in adult acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) patients remains unknown. We conducted a retrospective EBMT registry analysis (2000-2022) of ALL patients who underwent transplantation in CR1 after one (n = 2038), two (n = 296), or three or more (n = 110) induction cycles. Median age was 40 years (range 18-73); 79% had B-ALL. At 2 ...