Clinical significance of late CMV disease in adult patients who underwent allogeneic stem cell transplant.

INTRODUCTION

Late cytomegalovirus (CMV) disease, which was defined as CMV disease occurring >100 days post-transplant, remains an important complication among allogeneic stem cell transplant recipients, even now that the prophylactic strategy using ganciclovir preemptive therapy has been established. Due to the recent expansion of donor sources and conditioning regimens, it is therefore appropriate to reevaluate the incidence, risk factors, and clinical impacts of late CMV disease.

METHODS

This study included the 1295 adult patients, who underwent transplant for the first time from 2008 to 2015, without underlying disease relapse or CMV disease within 100 days post-transplant. There were no restrictions on underlying diseases or transplant procedures.

RESULTS

During the median follow-up period of 48.4 months, 21 patients developed late CMV disease and the 5-year cumulative incidence of late CMV disease was 1.6%. By multivariate analysis, haploidentical related donor, adult T-cell leukemia lymphoma, and preemptive therapy before 100 days post-transplant were extracted as independent risk factors. Late CMV disease negatively affected transplant outcomes, and was identified as an independent risk factor for the non-relapse mortality rate (hazard ratio 3.83, p < 0.001) and overall survival rate (hazard ratio 4.01, p < 0.001). Although 17 of 21 patients with late CMV disease died, the main causes of death were not related to CMV, except in three patients with CMV pneumonia.

CONCLUSIONS

Although the incidence of late CMV disease is low in transplant recipients, this complication negatively affects clinical courses. Therefore, transplant recipients with these risk factors should be more carefully managed.