While AHSCT seemed to balance survival differences between AML and ALL, children and adolescents benefited most. Survival differences between pediatric and adult patients are likely due to different donor selection and conditioning strategies. However, patient outcomes improved over time of AHSCT, for all age groups. In addition, relapse and non-relapse mortality increase with age and the mortality rate for males was significantly higher than that for females with acute leukemia after AHSCT. Although relapse and NRM increased with age, NRM tended to improve, especially in YA. Further investigations with a longer follow-up are needed to clarify differences in age-related survival between the diseases.
Frietsch et al. (Wed,) studied this question.