Treatment of severe acquired aplastic anemia

: Severe acquired aplastic anaemia is associated with high morbidity and mortality despite improvement in the results obtained both with bone marrow transplantation and with immunosuppressive treatment. Early bone marrow transplantation is the treatment of choice for patients under 45 years of age, if the neutrophil granulocyte count is less than 0.2-0.5 x 10(9)/l and an HLA-identical sibling donor is available. Other patients should receive primary immunosuppression with antithymocyte globulin, cyclosporin and glucocorticoid in combination with granulocyte colony-stimulating factor. If they fail to respond after three months, and a donor is available, such patients may be treated with bone marrow transplantation. However, transplantation with marrow from donors other than HLA-identical siblings is still at an experimental stage.