Extracorporeal photochemotherapy in human and murine graft-versus-host disease

Extracorporeal photochemotherapy (ECP) is an immunotherapy that has found a role in the therapy of cutaneous T cell lymphoma, a disease of mature acti vated T cells. Graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) is also mediated by activat ed T cells, and thus often responds to therapies that target T cells. Murin e models for both GVHD and ECP can be combined to study the impact of this immunotherapy on GVHD. In this paper we present a patient with GVHD who dem onstrated a beneficial therapeutic response to treatment with ECP. The find ings of this case are compared with the observations from a murine model fo r GVHD-ECP. The potential mechanisms of ECP in the treatment of GVHD are di scussed, along with the similarities observed with ECP in the treatment of other conditions. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserve d.