Previous studies have demonstrated that the preconditioning/pretransplant clinical status is important for the risk of developing severe posttransplant complications [19, 20], and we therefore investigated whether the pretransplant serum levels of endocan as well as soluble adhesion molecules derived from endothelial cells (E-selectin and VCAM-1) are associated with the development of posttransplant acute GVHD. Here, VCAM1 is linked to acute graft versus host disease.