Immunoablative Therapy with Bone Marrow or Peripheral Stem Cell Transplantation for Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

This report evaluates the efficacy of immunoablative therapy with bone marrow or peripheral stem cell transplantation (SCT) for patients with severe systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) whose disease has failed to respond to standard therapies. The use of immunoablative therapy for any other autoimmune diseases, such as neurologic disorders, hematologic diseases, or any malignancy, is outside the scope of this report, as are any other methods of treating SLE.

Immunoablative therapy is a complex medical procedure that involves destroying or ablating the abnormal cells from the immune system that are responsible for the disease and then reconstituting the immune system with healthy stem cells harvested from the patient’s own bone marrow or peripheral blood (autologous transplant) or from a donor (allogeneic transplant).

Interest in immunoablative therapy for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) arose from observations that cases of pre-existing autoimmune disease coincidental with...