Umbilical Cord Blood Cytomegalovirus Serostatus Does Not Have an Impact on Outcomes of Umbilical Cord Blood Transplantation for Acute Leukemia

•Umbilical cord blood transplantation is a feasible approach for the patients with acute leukemia, given sufficient results of overall survival at 5 years of 40%.•This is the first study to analyze the impact of maternal CMV status on unrelated UCBT outcome for patients with acute leukemia.•Maternal CMV serostatus has no impact on main outcomes of unrelated UCBT (ie, nonrelapse mortality, relapse incidence, overall survival, and disease-free survival) for patients with acute leukemia.•We suggest it is not important to include CMV serostatus in the UCB selection criteria for patients with acute leukemia as it is generally recommended in adult donor setting.

Several studies have reported an impact of adult hematopoietic stem cell donor cytomegalovirus (CMV) serostatus on allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation outcomes. Limited data, however, are available on the impact of cord blood unit (CBU) CMV serostatus on allogeneic umbilical cord blood transplantation (UCBT) outcomes. We analyzed, retrospectively, the impact of CBU CMV serostatus on relapse incidence (RI) and 2-year nonrelapse mortality (NRM) of single-unit CBU transplantation for acute leukemia. Data from 1177 de novo acute leukemia pediatric and adult patients transplanted within European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation centers between 2000 and 2012 were analyzed. CBUs were provided by the European Cord Blood Banks. The median follow-up time for live patients was 59.9 months. The recipients of CMV-seropositive and -seronegative CBUs showed a comparable RI (33% versus 35%, respectively, P = .6) and 2-year cumulative incidence of NRM (31% versus 32%, respectively, P = .5). We conclude that CBU CMV serostatus did not influence RI and NRM in de novo acute leukemia patients after allo-UCBT and should not be included as a criteria for cord blood choice.