Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) cell count, morphology and flow cytometric evaluations are used to investigate central nervous system (CNS) involvement in leukemia/lymphoma. We performed CSF short tandem repeat (STR) analysis to monitor CSF chimerism status and evaluate for disease involvement in 11 asymptomatic pediatric allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) recipients with hemato-lymphoid neoplasms and high risk for or history of CNS involvement. Eighteen (64%) of the samples with median CSF cell count of 1/mm3 with 90% lymphocytes gave conclusive STR results, suggesting that this DNA-based method can be used in monitoring CSF chimerism status after HSCT with an acceptable yield.
Keywords: Cerebrospinal fluid; Donor chimerism; Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation; Short tandem repeat analysis.
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