My 11 year old daughter is currently undergoing immunosuppressive drug therapy to treat her very severe aplastic anemia (she was diagnosed at age 10 in Feb 2008). Her current drug regimen consists of daily prednisone, daily cyclosporine, and weekly neupogen injections. She has had no adverse reactions and her neutraphils (WBC) greatly increase within the first 48 hours of the injection and then begin to decrease until her next injection with an overall trend of her counts moving upward every so slowly. She was given Neulasta (the longer-lasting version of Neupogen) initially, however, our insurance would not cover it and we had to go back to using Neupogen (Neulasta cost 4x as much). Neupogen is also very costly and we were able to qualify for Amgen's Pharmacy Replacement Program with the help of the case worker at Sacred Heart Children's Hospital. If you have any questions at all about Neupogen and it's potential short term and long term effects on your specific diagnosis, I recommend you discuss them in detail with your oncologist. My daughter has not undergone chemo and since she is overall responding fairly well to immunosuppressive drug therapy, she will not need a BMT at this time. Hope this helps.
