Aplastic anemia is a condition in which the bone marrow produces an insufficient number of new blood cells. In this study, patients with severe aplastic anemia were given a bone marrow transplant from a compatible family member and followed from the time of transplantation until the development of severe (life threatening) graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). GVHD is a complication of bone marrow transplantation in which the immune cells produced by the new bone marrow recognize the recipient as a foreign body and mount an attack. To ward off GVHD, the recipients received one of two drug combinations: methotrexate alone (MTX) or methotrexate plus cyclosporine (MTX+CSP). The goal of the study is to determine whether treatment affected the occurrence of GVHD.
Group: Treatment group (MTX, MTX+CSP)Time: Time on study (days)Status: Event indicator for GVHD (1=GVHD, 0=No observed GVHD while on study)LAF: Whether (LAF=1) or not (LAF=0) the patient was assigned to a laminar airflow isolation room. Restricting laminar airflow helps to maintain a sterile environment.Age: The patient’s age (in years) at the time of transplantationI obtained the data from
Kalbfleisch JD and Prentice RL (2002). The Statistical Analysis of Failure Time Data (2nd edition), Wiley.
The original study appears in
Storb R, Deeg HJ, Farewell V, Doney K, Appelbaum F, Beatty P, Bensinger W, Buckner CD, Clift R, and Hansen J (1986). Marrow transplantation for severe aplastic anemia: methotrexate alone compared with a combination of methotrexate and cyclosporine for prevention of acute graft-versus-host disease. Blood, 68: 119-125.