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Prospective assessment of white matter integrity in adult stem cell transplant recipients

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Abstract

Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is often used in the treatment of hematologic disorders. Although it can be curative, the pre-transplant conditioning regimen can be associated with neurotoxicity. In this prospective study, we examined white matter (WM) integrity with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and neuropsychological functioning before and one year after HSCT in twenty-two patients with hematologic disorders and ten healthy controls evaluated at similar intervals. Eighteen patients received conditioning treatment with high-dose (HD) chemotherapy, and four had full dose total body irradiation (fTBI) and HD chemotherapy prior to undergoing an allogeneic or autologous HSCT. The results showed a significant decrease in mean diffusivity (MD) and axial diffusivity (AD) in diffuse WM regions one year after HSCT (p-corrected <0.05) in the patient group compared to healthy controls. At baseline, patients treated with allogeneic HSCT had higher MD and AD in the left hemisphere WM than autologous HSCT patients (p-corrected <0.05). One year post-transplant, patients treated with allogeneic HSCT had lower fractional anisotropy (FA) and higher radial diffusivity (RD) in the right hemisphere and left frontal WM compared to patients treated with autologous HSCT (p-corrected <0.05).There were modest but significant correlations between MD values and cognitive test scores, and these were greatest for timed tests and in projection tracts. Patients showed a trend toward a decline in working memory, and had lower cognitive test scores than healthy controls at the one-year assessment. The findings suggest a relatively diffuse pattern of alterations in WM integrity in adult survivors of HSCT.

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded by The Leon Levy Foundation and The Society of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. We are grateful to Emily McCullagh, NP-C and Elizabeth Richards for their assistance in the identification of eligible patients and data collection, respectively. Additional support for imaging data analysis was provided by NIA grants P30 AG10133 and R01 AG19771.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurology, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, 1275 York Avenue, New York, NY, 10065, USA

    D .D. Correa

  2. Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA

    Y. Wang, J .D. West & A .J. Saykin

  3. Department of Radiology, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Brooklyn, NY, USA

    K .K. Peck

  4. Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA

    J .C. Root

  5. Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA

    R .E. Baser & H .T. Thaler

  6. Department of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, USA

    T .B. Shore

  7. Department of Medicine, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA

    A. Jakubowski

  8. Department ofNeurology, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, USA

    N. Relkin

  9. Department of Radiology, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    Y. Wang

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  1. D .D. Correa
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Correa, D..., Wang, Y., West, J... et al. Prospective assessment of white matter integrity in adult stem cell transplant recipients. Brain Imaging and Behavior 10, 486–496 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-015-9423-3

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