The Resurgence of Granulocyte Transfusions

Abstract

Granulocyte transfusion can be used as supportive therapy in patients with life-threatening neutropenia caused by bone marrow failure or in patients with neutrophil dysfunction. Emerging evidence demonstrates the benefits of granulocyte transfusions to treat infections in patients after treatment with high-dose chemotherapy, particularly the chemotherapy associated with conditioning for hematopoietic stem cell transplant. There has been an increased interest in the use of therapeutic granulocyte transfusion in recent years due to the ability to use granulocyte colony-stimulated factors to produce higher doses of granulocytes for transfusion. Other factors that influence the outcome of transfusion include the type of infection being treated, the likelihood of recipient marrow recovery, and recipient alloimmunization. This article provides a historical perspective on granulocyte transfusion and an overview of its clinical use.

Granulocyte transfusion vs. neutropenia — is there a chance to win this battle?

“…In patients with haematological malignancies (HM), plenty of factors, including dose-intensive chemotherapy and haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), may cause severe and persistent neutropenia, resulting in the risk of a compromised immune system and increased susceptibility to opportunistic and life-threatening bacterial and fungal infections. Granulocyte transfusions (GTx), which have been in use for more than 50 years, seem to be a sensible therapeutic approach to this problem [1,2]. The theoretical potential for granulocyte transfusion was established by early animal studies, which showed that granulocytes transfused to neutropenic dogs were of normal appearance and viability and migrated to the sites of infection [3].…”

“…This was the first known use of GTx in humans [6]. Due to the transfusion of malignant cells, this method is contentious to readers today, yet it was thought to be a realistic choice at the time [2,7].…”