Successful cord blood transplantation in a girl with monosomy 7 myelodysplastic syndrome and reduced numbers of B cells.

This report described unrelated umbilical cord blood transplantation for a 3-year-old girl with myelodysplastic syndrome and monosomy 7. The patient had a prolonged course characterized by recurrent infection and slowly progressive pancytopenia. She had reduced numbers of circulating B cells but no decline in immunoglobulin levels. Chemotherapy was not initially recommended because it was contraindicated due to intercurrent lower respiratory tract infection. After 10 months, the girl achieved hematologic remission after induction chemotherapy. The patient then underwent 2-loci HLA-mismatched unrelated donor cord blood transplantation. The time to neutrophil and platelet engraftment was 12 and 23 days post-transplantation, respectively. Acute graft-versus-host disease following transplantation was minimal. She was in continuing hematological remission with full donor chimerism 3 years after transplantation.