Quantification of Torque Teno Virus and Epstein-Barr Virus Is of Limited Value for Predicting the Net State of Immunosuppression After Lung Transplantation

Nordén, Rickard; Magnusson, Jesper; Lundin, Anna; Tang, Ka-Wei; Nilsson, Staffan; Lindh, Magnus; Andersson, Lars-Magnus; Riise, Gerdt C; Westin, Johan

In this study, infectious events were defined as symptoms prompting antimicrobial therapy also in cases without a positive culture (bacterial and fungal infections) or simply detection of a potential pathogen by PCR (VRTI, CMV). Attempting to focus on more severe infectious events, subgroup analysis of events requiring intravenous therapy was made. Also, this analysis failed to reveal any significant association between TTV-or EBV-DNA levels and infectious events. However, no proper validated scoring system for grading of the severity of infectious complications was used in this study, and we cannot exclude that our definitions cause underestimation of severe complications. Further studies using proper grading of events are needed.