After infection, EBV establishes a life-long persistent and latent infection in B lymphocytes. It is estimated that this ubiquitous virus infects more than 90% of the world’s population. Its sensitivity will enable to estimate the kinetics of EBV load and the impact of treatments to control EBV reactivations.Įpstein Barr Virus (EBV) is a member of the Herpesviridae family. In conclusion, the RT assay is a reliable assay for EBV load in whole blood. In patients treated with rituximab, the RT assay remained positive in 5 patients at the time it dropped below undetectable levels with the V1 assay. EBV RT values were on average 0.30 log 10 IU/mL lower than those measured with the V1 assay. On samples above the limit of quantification, the two assays were strongly correlated. Intra-assay coefficients of variation (CV) ranged between 0.35 and 1.35%, and inter-assay CV between 3.40 and 4.5%. The assay was linear (r 2 = 0.9974) in the range of all samples tested (100 to 1,000,000 IU/mL). The estimated limit of detection was 88 IU/mL. The RT assay was compared on 282 prospective clinical samples with the Artus EBV PCR Kit V1 assay (V1) and we analyzed the kinetics of EBV load in 11 patients receiving rituximab treatment. In a context of accreditation and the availability of EBV international standard, we evaluated the Abbott RealTime EBV (RT) assay for EBV quantification in whole blood.
Standardized and sensitive assays for Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) are needed to define universal cutoff for treatment initiation in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cells transplant recipients.
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