PATERNITY AFTER BONE-MARROW TRANSPLANTATION FOLLOWING CONDITIONING WITH TOTAL-BODY IRRADIATION

A 28-year-old man with chronic myeloid leukaemia received an allogenei c bone marrow transplant after conditioning with daunorubicin, cycloph osphamide and fractionated total body irradiation (TBI). Four years la ter his wife gave birth to a healthy child. Although the patient was a zospermic serologic HLA testing suggested that the patient was the fat her of the child. DNA fingerprinting as well as analysis of three vari able number of tandem repeats (VNTR) loci D1S80 (MCT118), D17S30 (YNZ2 2) and the apolipoprotein B hypervariable region (apo B 3') gave unequ ivocal results showing that the patient was the father. Fathering a ch ild after TBI-containing regimen has been very rare and this is the fi rst case where the paternity has been proven with DNA methodology.