Stromal fibroblastic and hematopoietic progenitors in patients with graft-versus-host disease (GVHD).

We cultured bone marrow cells from patients receiving bone marrow transplantation (BMT) to assay bone marrow fibroblast colony-forming cells (CFU-F) and hematopoietic progenitors (CFU-mix, CFU-C, BFU-E and CFU-E), and compared the mean values obtained from patients with and without graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). The value of CFU-F colonies from 15 patients was always less in patients with acute GVHD Grade II,III than in those with Grade 0,I over the period 30 to 110 days after BMT. The CFU-F colonies from patients with Grade 0,I consisted of approximately the same number of small and large colonies, whereas virtually all CFU-F colonies from patients with Grade II,III were small. Fibroblasts collected from bone marrow cells cultured for 2-3 weeks were incubated with IL-1 (50 U/ml) for 24 h. The concentrations of G-CSF in the culture supernatants from patients with Grade II,III were higher than in those with Grade 0,I. The results of assays of hematopoietic progenitors from 48 patients showed that the number of hematopoietic progenitors decreased as the severity of acute GVHD increased. These results suggest that the myelosuppression seen in GVHD may be associated with reduced numbers of CFU-F in bone marrow.