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[Cytomegalovirus transmission through blood transfusion to newborn recipients]

H Ohto1, N Ujiie

  • 1Blood Transfusion Service, Fukushima Medical College.

Premature newborns, who are at risk if infected with cytomegalovirus (CMV), has been recommended to receive blood from seronegative donors or leukocyte-reduced blood. The lower CMV infection rate seen in later studies is associated with the decreased use of fresh blood. One of the most significant risk factors of the infection is the use of fresh blood. CMV infection rate of filtered-irradiated blood newborn recipients in our prospective study did not differ from non-filtered and irradiated blood recipients. Gamma-irradiated blood is analog to leukodepleted blood in terms of abolished capability of immune response, even though the former contains adequate number of leukocyts. Mixed lymphocytes reaction of donor's lymphocyte plays a pivotal role in transmission of CMV from seropositive donors to recipients. It is likely that some newborns with post-transfusion graft-versus-host disease were misdiagnosed as transfusion-acquired CMV disease, as often overlap later CMV infection due to profound agranulocytosis. We hypothesize that donor lymphocytes abolished proliferating function by irradiation, storage or filtration are no more possible to evoke reaction against recipient's antigen and thus fail to transmit CMV from infected donor to recipient.

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