Elderly MDS Patients May Achieve Long-Term Survival From Stem Cell Transplantation (ASCO 2012)

Elderly patients with myelodysplastic syndromes or acute myeloid leukemia can find long-term survival after undergoing stem cell transplantation transplantation, according to a recent study of the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Although the number of patients long-term disease control, many patients still relapsed or died of transplant-related causes. The study investigators recognize that new methods of treatment are necessary to solve a number of attacks and deaths related to transplantation.

The results were presented in a poster session at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Article ASCO) 2012 meeting in Chicago earlier this month.

In patients with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) or acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and source (Allogeneic) stem cell transplantation is currently the only curative treatment is available. Patients with MDS or AML produce stem cells that are not properly developed in the work cell. The donor stem cell transplantation transplantation, patients undergoing high-dose chemotherapy to destroy their own stem cells, which are later komi stem cells from healthy donors.

Donor stem cell collection transplantation has traditionally been used only in younger patients because of potential side effects and complications related to procedures, which can be particularly difficult in elderly patients.

In this study, researchers announced the results of the survival of 182 elderly patients with MDS or AML undergoing donor stem cell transplant graft at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston between 1996 and 2011. All patients in the study were older than 64 years, median patient age was 67 years. Of the 182 patients at diagnosis, 39 had MDS.

Median follow-up time for living patients was 12.6 months. The overall survival was 45 percent in one year after transplant, 28 percent in three years after transplantation, and 21 percent at five years after transplantation.

Three-year overall survival rate was higher in patients who received transplants at all forgiveness than for those with active disease 40 percent vs. 23 percent). Similarly, patients from age 65 to 69 with higher three-year overall survival rate than those aged 69 (30 percent versus 20 percent).

Within 100 days after transplantation, 14 percent of patients died of transplant-related causes. The combined incidence of death from transplant-related causes increased by 18 percent in one year and 21 percent in three years.

Within one year after transplant, 46 percent of patients relapsed. Within three and five years after transplantation, 53 percent of patients relapsed.

Twenty-six percent of patients in moderate to fatal acute graft-versus-host disease that develops within 100 days after transplantation. Graft-versus-host disease is a common complication of transplantation donor immune cells recognize the recipient's cells as foreign and attack them. An additional 35 percent experienced chronic graft-versus-host disease that develops after 100 days after transplantation.

Pat Buchanan out at MSNBC

MSNBC was a conservative commentator Pat Buchanan on Thursday, four months after suspending him following the publication of his latest book.

The book "the suicide of a great power" in the chapter entitled "The End of White America" ​​and "The Death of Christian America." Critics called the book racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic, charges Buchanan denied.

MSNBC President Phil Griffin in the last month that I do not think Buchanan's book "should be part of the national dialogue, much less a part of the dialogue MSNBC."

The network said Thursday that "after 10 years we decided to part ways Pat Buchanan. We wish him well."

Buchanan, a column posted on Thursday, called the decision "an undeniable victory blacklisters."

The former GOP candidate has seemed increasingly out of place, as MSNBC pointed out, liberal commentary in recent years. But he has a regular presence, even forging an unlikely talk show host Rachel Maddow chemistry despite not agree on most issues.

Buchanan wrote that advocacy groups such as the Transfiguration and the Anti-Defamation League brand people racists or anti-Semitic, you know "venture outside the narrow enclosure, which seek to limit the debate." Their aim is to silence and censor dissent, while proclaiming devotion to the First Amendment, he said.

"I know that these blacklisters," he wrote. "They operate behind closed doors, the phone calls, threats and send off-the-record meetings. They operate in the dark, because as said Al Smith, nor anti-American can live in the sunshine."

The liberal media watchdog Media Matters America, MSNBC, said that Buchanan made the right decision in letting go.

The book "was not the first nor the worst of crimes," said Ari Rabin-Havt, executive vice president of Media Matters. "He is already the same racial insensitivity, anti-Semitic and homophobic statements in the past 50 years."