Marrow Transplantation for Nonmalignant Disorders

It was first shown in rodents that the use of a marrow-graft donor matched at the major histocompatibility complex reduced the incidence and severity of graft-versus-host disease and considerably increased the likelihood of long-term survival of the recipient.1 The demonstration in an outbred species, the dog, that littermate donors matched for major histocompatibility complex could be selected by serologic typing, with subsequent long-term survival of the chimeric recipient,2 set the stage for marrow transplantations using matched pairs of human sibling donor-recipients. Marrow transplantations for non-malignant disorders using matched siblings were undertaken first in children with immunologic deficiency disorders3 and subsequently . . .