LAUSR

Chimerism status evaluation is a routine test performed in post-HSCT period. Aim of the study was to evaluate a qPCR method (GenDx, Utrecht, the Netherlands) applicability for this purpose. Study included 74 recipient/donor pairs tested for informative markers: median of four and six informative markers was found for patients (related and unrelated donor, respectively). Higher sensitivity of qPCR method was confirmed by analysis of recipient post-HSCT samples (N = 800) among which microchimerism (0.1-1% recipient DNA) was detected in 21.8% of cases. The ability to detect less than 1% of minor population, as opposed to the Short Tandem Repeat (STR) method for which 1% is the limit, translated into earlier identification of a disease relapse for four patients in our study sample. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.