TY - JOUR T1 - Reduced intensity conditioning before allografting: moderate enthusiasm may be more appropriate JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J SP - 357 LP - 358 DO - 10.1183/09031936.04.00003004 VL - 23 IS - 3 AU - U. Schuler Y1 - 2004/03/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/23/3/357.abstract N2 - Since the first clinical series of allogeneic bone marrow transplants were reported, the procedure has been associated with a considerable amount of pulmonary complications, among many other problems. Over the last three decades, huge efforts have been devoted to the avoidance and the effective treatment of these complications. In the past, numerous patients did not undergo transplantation, either because they were considered too ill or too old to tolerate these procedure-related side-effects. In this issue of the European Respiratory Journal (ERJ), Nusair et al. 1 from Jerusalem report on their experience with pulmonary complications as observed after transplants with “nonmyeloablative” conditioning. Stem cell transplantation (SCT) can be divided into three components: the conditioning therapy (chemotherapy with/without irradiation), the source and composition of the graft, and the post-transplant immunosuppression. Modifications of all three components may contribute to the profile of efficacy and toxicity of the procedure. The group from the Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem was among the first to develop a procedure that tried to minimise the toxicity of the preparative regimen and relied more on the graft-versus-leukaemia (GVL) effect of the transplanted allogeneic immune system 2. Numerous other centres then followed and this has resulted … ER -