Hermann Einsele, MD, from the University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany, discusses the need for vaccinations after allogeneic stem cell transplants at the 2017 annual meeting of the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) in Marseille, France. He highlights that it is important to remember that patients lose specific immunity after allogeneic stem cell transplantation and are therefore prone to infections. Prof. Einsele points out that many of the vaccinations carried out when patients were young need to be repeated to boost immune responses and induce new immune responses so that the transplanted immune system can learn to fight infections. The specific immune responses are lost during the first 6 to 12 months after transplant. Depending on the immune function active in the patients, the vaccinations can be started. These were often carried out quite late, but are now being moved to an earlier time after the transplant.
