Infectious complications after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation: current status and future perspectives in Korea

Cho, Sung-Yeon; Lee, Hyeon-Jeong; Lee, Dong-Gun

Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), known previously as bone marrow transplantation, is performed to treat two broad categories of diseases. The first category consists of functional failure of bone marrow or marrow-derived cells, including aplastic anemia, myelodysplastic syndrome, immunodeficiency syndromes (severe combined immune deficiency or chronic granulomatous disease), genetic diseases (mucopolysaccharidosis, glycogen storage diseases, etc.), or hemoglobinopathies (thalassemia, sickle cell anemia, etc.). In such cases, HSCT is applied to replace the de-fective, non-functional bone marrow tissues. Diseases in the second category-which includes hematologic malignancies such as acute or chronic leukemia, multiple myeloma, lymphomas, and myeloproliferative neoplasms-are more common indications for HSCT, the performance of which aims (1) to restore the myelosuppressive or myeloablative effect of cytotoxic treatment (such as intensive chemotherapy and/or total body irradiation [TBI]) to eliminate malignant cells, and (2) to induce a graft-versus-leukemic effect by providing anti-neoplastic immune cells expressing tumor-specific or -associated antigens [1, 2] .