Ruxolitinib as Salvage Therapy in Steroid-Refractory Acute Graft-versus-Host Disease in Pediatric Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant Patients

We describe our retrospective clinical experience with ruxolitinib for steroid-refractory acute graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) in pediatric allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) patients. Ruxolitinib was administered orally at 5 mg twice daily for children ≥ 25 kg or 2.5 mg twice daily if <25 kg. We excluded patients who received new immune suppressive agents within 2 weeks before initiation of ruxolitinib from response analysis. Patients were called a treatment failure if ruxolitinib was stopped before completion of 4 weeks of therapy because of adverse effects and not because of progression of acute GVHD. Thirteen patients received ruxolitinib, and 11 patients were assessable for response. One patient achieved a complete response, 4 had a partial response, and 2 had no response at 4 weeks after the first ruxolitinib dose. Four patients were treatment failures. Overall response rate was 45%. Adverse effects (n = 13) included grades 3 to 4 elevated alanine transaminase (n = 7), grades 3 to 4 neutropenia (n = 5), and grade 4 thrombocytopenia (n = 3). Infectious complications in patients included for response analysis (n = 11) were Epstein-Barr viremia (n = 2), adenovirus (n = 2), BK (n = 3), bacterial infections...Continue Reading