Patients and methods Patients This prospective study involved 37 consecutive patients with a median age of 28 years (range: 19-58 years) who underwent an allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) from June 2009 to February 2011 at the Transplantation Centre of Hematology Department Protein Tyrosine Kinase inhibitor at University Hospital Bratislava. There were 24 males and 13 females. Their diagnosis included acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in 13 patients,

acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in 14 patients, chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in 2 patients, Hodgkin’s lymhoma in one patient, myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) in 3 patients, osteomyelofibrosis in one patient and severe aplastic anemia in 3 patients. Twenty-seven patients were conditioned with myeloablative regimens including cyclophosphamide (CY) 60 mg/kg body weight intravenously on 2 consecutive days in combination with fractionated total

body irradiation (TBI) 12 Gy in six fractions of 2 Gy over 3 days in 12 patiens or in combination with peroral busulphan 4 mg/kg body weight daily for 4 days in 15 patients. The remaining 10 patients were conditioned next with nonmyeloablative Mizoribine chemical structure regimens (cyclophosphamide, busulphan, fludarabine, etoposide, cytosine arabinoside, melphalan, idarubicin, carmustine or with combination of antithymocyte globulin). Fifteen patients received hematopoietic

stem cells from an HLA-matched related donor and 22 patients from an HLA-matched unrelated donor. Cyclosporine A and short-term methotrexate were administered for the prophylaxis of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). Two patients had arterial hypertension, 2 patients had diabetes mellitus and 14 patients had dyslipidemia before transplantation. One patient had a prior history of a cardiac disease because of leukemic infiltration of the heart (at the time of diagnosis of acute leukemia). The cumulative dose of anthracyclines (ANT) (idarubicin, daunorubicin and mitoxantrone) was calculated as the equivalent dose of doxorubicin. Twenty-nine patients were previously treated with ANT (median 250 mg/m2, range: 100-470). Characteristics of patients are summarized in Table 1.