Harvesting peripheral blood progenitor cells from healthy donors: retrospective comparison of filgrastim and lenograstim

Mobilization of CD34+ into peripheral blood is attained by either glycosylated (lenograstim) or non-glycosylated recombinant G-CSF (filgrastim). 101 donors, 57 males, median age 42 years (range 16-63) entered this retrospective study. Group I (55 cases) received filgrastim and group II lenograstim subcutaneously for 5-6 days. The peak number of CD34+ cells/microl blood observed on day 4 and 5 was not significantly different in the two groups. No differences were shown in terms of both circulating CFU-GM at the time of harvesting and CD34+ target of collection. The most frequent side effects were bone pain (18.2% grade I; 36.4% grade II, 7.3% grade III), headache (18.2%), nausea (9.1%), fever (5.5%) and a mild splenomegaly (> 2 cm) (5.5%) in filgrastim group, and bone pain (37.0% grade I, 26.1% grade II, 2.2% grade III), headache (17.4%), nausea (15.2%), fever (4.4%) and a mild splenomegaly (4.3%) in lenograstim group, respectively. CD34+ collection was associated with thrombocytopenia, which was not significantly different between the two groups. No donor in either group developed long-term adverse effects. We conclude that both G-CSFs are comparable in terms of CD34+ cell collection, safety and tolerability. Copyright 2005 Wiley-Liss, Inc