Complete remission following chemotherapy with low-dose cytosine arabinoside and macrophage colony-stimulating factor/granulocyte colony-stimulating factor in a patient with relapsed acute myeloid leukemia after stem cell transplantation.

The prognosis of patients who relapse with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) after undergoing stem cell transplantation (SCT) is poor. There exist some treatments for relapsed AML; however, almost all treatments are associated with a high level of regimen-related toxicities (RRTs). The RRT of donor lymphocyte infusion is lower than that of other treatments; however, the efficacy of this treatment in treating patients with relapsed AML is lower than that observed in patients with chronic myelomonocytic leukemia. We herein report a case of relapsed AML after SCT in a 65-year-old man. We performed donor lymphocyte infusion; however, it was not effective. We then administered chemotherapy with cytosine arabinoside and macrophage colony-stimulating factor/granulocyte colony-stimulating factor and complete remission was achieved. Since graft-versus-host disease occurred after the administration of low-dose chemotherapy in this case, we speculated that the chemotherapy induced a graft-versus-leukemia effect.