The current practice for diagnosing graft versus host disease (GVHD) includes clinical or endoscopic evaluation of the patient. Clinical diagnosis is limited by an overlapping symptomatic spectrum with infectious causes, a common scenario in the post-transplant setting where an invasive procedure, such as endoscopy, is often impractical. We, therefore, evaluated the role of fecal calprotectin as a diagnostic as well as a prognostic biomarker for gastrointestinal GVHD (GI-GVHD) occurrence and severity in the post-hematopoietic transplant population. Following Prisma guidelines, we performed a systematic search of articles published after 2004 using the PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, and Web of Science databases. After a detailed screening, 10 studies involving a total of 494 patients were included. In the cohorts comparing median fecal calprotectin (mFC) level in GI-GVHD vs. non-GI-GVHD patients, the results indicated an increase in the mFC level in patients with GI-GVHD when compared to non-GI-GVHD patients. Similarly, an increase in the mFC level was seen in accordance with the severity of the disease. Moreover, corticosteroid-resistant patients had a higher mFC level as compared to corticosteroid-sensitive patients. Our study indicates that the mFC level can be used for diagnosing as well as predicting the treatment response to GI-GVHD. However, future randomized prospective trials involving larger populations are needed to further explore its significance.
Keywords: biomarker; calprotectin; diagnosis; graft versus host disease; stem cell transplantation.