A 27-year-old man with severe aplastic anemia underwent bone marrow transplantation from his HLA identical brother in July 2016. Conditioning included ATGAM 30 mg/kg for 3 days and Cyclophosphamide 50 mg/kg for 4 days. The patient received several platelet and red blood cell transfusions before and after the conditioning. The patient received broad spectrum antibiotics and caspofungin because persistant febrile neutropenia without bacteriological or mycological documentation. Hemophagocytic syndrome was diagnosed on day +12. Steroids at 1 mg/kg were started on day +12. Fever resolved the same day but resumed 3 days later associated to intravascular hemolysis with no schizocytes on blood smears and negative DAT. Thick blood film smears performed on day +26 revealed Plasmodium falciparum parasites (parasitemia = 20%). Except the level of parasitemia, there were no signs of gravity. Quinine was started on day 26 at a loading dose of 15 mg/kg followed by 8 mg/kg three times a day for 20 doses. Fever vanished after 2 days. Parasitemia cleared in 3 days and remained negative thereafter. Investigations revealed that the patient was transfused by a red cell unit harvested in a voluntary donor native of a malaria endemic country. PCR for P. falciparum performed in this donor in the frame of investigations was positive. The patient is alive with a normal blood count 1 year after BMT.

We evaluated the efficacy and toxicity of T-cell-replete haploidentical stem cell transplantation (TCR-haploSCT) using low-dose antithymocyte globulin (ATG) in children with refractory/relapsed (R/R) acute leukemia. From October 2009 to April 2016, 39 consecutive patients with R/R acute leukemia who underwent TCR-haploSCT were included. At the time of TCR-haploSCT, 17 patients were in complete remission (CR), but 22 had active disease. Thirty-three patients received a myeloablative regimen and six received a reduced-intensity conditioning regimen. Graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) prophylaxis comprised tacrolimus, methotrexate, prednisolone, and low-dose ATG (thymoglobulin 2.5 mg/kg). Neutrophil engraftment (> 0.5 × 109/L) was 95% after a median of 13 days. The median follow-up period was 527 days, with mean 3-year overall and disease-free survival rates of 45.1% [standard deviation (SD), ± 8.5%) and 33.8% (SD, ± 7.9%), respectively. The cumulative incidence of acute GvHD was 73.0%, but that of grade III-IV acute GvHD was 34.1%. The 3-year cumulative incidences of relapse and transplant-related mortality were 50.3 and 15.9%, respectively. Age < 10 years at transplantation was associated with a better overall survival in the multivariate analysis. These data suggest that TCR-haploSCT using a low-dose ATG combined with the GvHD prophylaxis described here has a significant anti-leukemic activity, particularly in younger patients.