Dept. of Internal Medicine, Virology, Pediatrics, Hematology, PGIMER, Chandigarh, India.
Abstracts of the papers presented at the XVIII National Conference of Indian Virological Society at Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India, December 11–13, 2008.
Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection is associated with high morbidity and mortality among allogeneic stem cell transplant recipients. To prevent this, patients are either given prophylaxis or pre-emptive treatment. We prospectively studied the prevalence of CMV infection and treatment outcome in all patients undergoing Allogeneic stem cell transplant at PGI from January 2007 till October 20008. All patients received oral acyclovir as prophylaxis for herpes and CMV infection. CMV were monitored by PP65 Ag every 2-weekly post transplant D+1 till day+100 and monthly thereafter till immunosuppressant's are taken off completely. Patients who had positive PP65 Ag were also monitored by quantitative CMV by RT PCR. In all, 26 patients had undergone hematopoietic stem cell transplant from October 2003 till October 2008. Out of 26, 8 patients underwent allogeneic stem cell transplant from January 2007 till October 2008. The indication of transplants were Aplastic anemia (n=5), Acute myeloid leukemia (n=2), Thalassemia (n=1). Out of 8, 2 patients (25%) showed positive PP65 Ag before day+100 and were treated premptively with intravenous gancyclovir for 21 days. While one patient did not had recurrence of CMV, the other patient showed rising copies of CMV by RT PCR after stopping intravenous gancyclovir. This patient was then given prophylactic intravenous gancyclovir till day+100. No patient developed CMV disease and there was no mortality related to CMV infection.
