Clinical Significance of Immature Reticulocyte as an Early Recovery Indicator after Bone Marrow Transplantation

골수이식 후 미성숙 망상적혈구의 유용성 평가

Bone marrow transplantation(BMT) is widely used as curative means of various malignant and nonmalignant hematologic disorders, and early and accurate determination of engraftment is very important for critical management decisions. Reticulocyte counts performed by automated flow cytometric methods is a good indicator of erythropoietic activity and its evaluation has been proposed as an early predictor of bone marrow regeneration. Some reports highlighted the usefulness of the percentage of highly fluorescent reticulocytes and the sum of highly and medium fluorescent reticulocytes(immature reticulocyte fraction, IRF). In Asan Medical Center, the criteria for engraftment following BMT or PBSCT was defined as the first day of a 3-day trend of absolute neutrophil count(ANC)${\geq}500/uL$ and platelet count${\geq}30{\times}10^3/uL$. In 1999, Grotto et al proposed an indidator of bone marrow recovery as the first day on which the IRF was twice the minimum value after bone marrow transplantation. To compare the both criterias, we got consecutive datas of immature reticulocyte fraction, absolute neutrophil count(ANC), WBC count, platelet count and reticulocyte count by XE-2100 automated hematology analyzer(Sysmex Co. Japan) from 33 patients daily after BMT. When compared to standard neutrophil engraftment(10-30 days, $16.2{\pm}4.6days$), IRF engraftment (5-21 days, $11.0{\pm}3.9days$) occured significantly earlier in 87.9% of patients(P<0.05). The mean engraftment day for WBC count(11-29 days, $16.4{\pm}4.3days$) was similar to ANC, but platelet count and reticulocyte count revealed more delayed data (10-49 days, $19.1{\pm}7.4days$ vs 17-64 days, $31.4{\pm}14.1days$). In conclusion, our results confirm that an increase in the immature reticulocyte population is the earliest sign of the hematopoietic recovery after BMT and that automated reticulocyte quantification including immature fraction may be integrated into clinical protocols to evaluate bone marrow reconstitution.