Two versus three day upfront use of granulocyte-colony stimulating factor in healthy bone marrow donors for pediatric bone marrow transplantation

In order to decrease donors’ exposure to granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF), we compared the effect of two versus three days of G-CSF priming on CD34+ yield in bone marrow (BM) harvest. Although the number of BM-CD34+ cells was higher in 3 day G-CSF priming, we achieved the same number of CD34+ cells per recipient’s weight in 2 day G-CSF priming group, too. In addition, the number of total nucleated cells (TNC) harvested from BM were similar with two or three day regimen. But mononuclear cells (MNC) of the BM graft was higher in the 3 day G-CSF priming group. Similar to CD34+ cell numbers, BM harvest yielded similar TNC, and MNC numbers per kilogram of the recipient. We also found that, young donors (≤10 year) had more peripheral blood MNC, bone marrow MNC and CD34+ cell numbers. Another interesting finding of this study was obtaining adequate number of peripheral blood stem cells for leukapheresis with three day G-CSF administration. Since engrafment times were also similar in two groups, we concluded that 2-days G-CSF priming was resulted in sufficient mobilization of BM stem cells.