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Better CMV medications urged for haploidentical stem cell transplant patients
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Prophylaxis may be a better alternative than pre-emptive treatment for patients before haploidentical stem cell transplantation, according to study results published online.
Researchers from Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem published cytomegalovirus (CMV) drug resistance results on 561 patients who received 616 hematopoietic stem cell transplantations (HSCT) between 2003 and 2008.
“Drug resistance was exclusively identified in haploidentical (haplo)-HSCT recipients receiving pre-emptive therapy, among whom the rate was 14.5%,” Dana G. Wolf, MD, of the clinical virology unit in the department of clinical microbiology and infectious diseases, and colleagues wrote.
They reported some common characteristics of the patients whose illness exhibited CMV drug resistance; specifically, those patients who had a higher viral load before the emergence of resistance and those patients who were on treatment longer.
The researchers noted some limitations to their data; specifically, the small number of patients with resistance and disease, the study’s “unicenter nature and heterogeneity” and some differences in the way medications were administered.
Regardless, the researchers said, their findings “underscore the need for better tolerable anti-CMV drugs with different mechanisms of action.”
Dana G. Wolf, MD, can be reached at the Clinical Virology Unit Department of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel, 91120; email: dana.wolf@ekmd.huji.ac.il.
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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