Evaluation of the Clinical Outcomes of Cyclosporine Short Infusion Versus Continuous Infusion Postallogenic Stem Cell Transplantation.

Background and objective: Cyclosporin A (CsA) exhibits a narrow therapeutic index and large inter-individual variation in pharmacokinetics. Two intermittent and 24-h continuous infusions (CI) are both commonly used regimens in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), with no universal consensus. The objective of this study was to assess whether CsA as a 2-h, twice-daily intravenous infusion (2 h/12 h) is non-inferior to 22 h CI every 24 h (22 h-CI/24 h) in terms of acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD) incidence and adverse events in allogeneic HSCT adult patients.

Methods: An open-label randomized trial recruited 31 allogeneic HSCT patients to receive the 2 h/12 h or 22 h-CI/24 h regimen. The primary outcomes were the incidence of aGVHD and CsA-related adverse events. The secondary outcomes included the correlation between the time concentration and area under the concentration-time curve (AUC) of 2 h/12 h versus 22 h-CI/24 h regimens.

Results: Six (19.4%) patients developed aGVHD. There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups concerning the incidence of aGVHD (13.3% in 2 h/12 h vs. 25% in 22 h-CI/24 h; p = 0.359). The distribution of different aGVHD types (p = 0.20) and mortality (p = 0.9) were not significantly different between the two groups. The two groups did not differ at any time with respect to AUCs, nephrotoxicity, hepatotoxicity, or electrolyte disturbance.

Conclusion: The study suggested that the 2 h/12 h regimen is non-inferior to the conventional regimen (22 h CI/24 h) in terms of aGVHD incidence and adverse events. Further research is necessary to validate these findings and to guide practice, considering the small sample size of this study.

Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT04575779 with initial release on 19 September 2020-Retrospectively registered, https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04575779 .