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Post-Transplant Events

Correlations of human herpesvirus 6B and CMV infection with acute GVHD in recipients of allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation

Bone Marrow Transplantation volume 42, pages 673–677 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) and CMV reactivation were monitored in a cohort of 72 consecutive haematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) patients using RQ-PCR and antigenaemia assay, respectively. The association between acute GVHD (aGVHD) and HHV-6B/CMV was evaluated. We found that on day 100 the cumulative incidence of grades I–IV aGVHD, grades II–IV aGVHD and grades III–IV aGVHD was 55.6, 27.8 and 13.9%, respectively. Multivariate analysis indicated that HHV-6B reactivation was closely correlated with a higher probability of grade II–IV aGVHD by day 30 (Hazard ratio (HR), 8.9; 95% confidence interval (CI), 2.6–31.0; P=0.0006), by day 50 (HR, 6.1; 95% CI, 2.1–17.8; P=0.0010) and by day 100 (HR, 4.8; 95% CI, 1.7–13.6; P=0.0028). However, CMV reactivation did not significantly affect the development of aGVHD by day 50 (HR, 0.8; 95% CI, 0.1–6.7; P=0.8236) and by day 100 (HR, 0.5; 95% CI, 0.1–4.4; P=0.5330) after HSCT. In conclusion, this study demonstrated that active HHV-6B infection, but not CMV, is significantly associated with an increased risk of aGVHD development after HSCT.

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Acknowledgements

Our thanks are extended to Dr Danielle Zerr at the University of Washington, Meei-Li Huang and Long Nguy at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center for their kind donation of HHV-6 standard plasmid, primers and probe for the preliminary experiments. We specially thank John C Herion, MD, Professor of Medicine Emeritus, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, NC, for carefully reading and editing the manuscript and Tong Wu for carefully reading the manuscript. We also thank Yan-Rong Liu and Ya-Qin Qin for their important laboratory help, and Xiao-Jun Huang, Kai-Yan Liu, Tong Wu, Dai-Hong Liu, Wei Han, Huan Chen and Lan-Ping Xu, who served as attending doctors during the study period, for providing samples and information about patients.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Peking University People's Hospital, Peking University Institute of Haematology, Beijing, People's Republic of China

    L-R Wang & D-P Lu

  2. Department of Blood and Marrow Transplantation, Beijing Dao Pei Hospital, Beijing, People's Republic of China

    L-J Dong & D-P Lu

  3. Division of Biostatistics, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    M-J Zhang

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Correspondence to D-P Lu.

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Wang, LR., Dong, LJ., Zhang, MJ. et al. Correlations of human herpesvirus 6B and CMV infection with acute GVHD in recipients of allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Bone Marrow Transplant 42, 673–677 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/bmt.2008.238

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