BK virus in renal transplantation

BK virus (BKPyV) associated nephropathy (BKPyVAN) may affect up to 10% of renal transplant recipients, causing graft failure in the absence of intervention. The dilemma in monitoring BKPyVAN in renal transplant patients has been that only testing urine BK viral load represents higher sensitivity (earlier detection) but lower specificity, while testing plasma BK viral load represents lower sensitivity (later detection) but higher specificity. However, blindly testing both urine and plasma inevitably contributes to unnecessary medical cost...

Background: Identification and quantification of the relevant factors for death can improve patients' individual risk assessment and decision-making. We used a well-documented patient cohort (n = 892) in a renal transplant programme with protocol biopsies to establish multivariable Cox models for risk assessment at 3 and 12 months post-transplantation. Methods: Patients transplanted between 2000 and 2007 were observed up to 11 years (total observation 5227 patient-years; median 5...

INTRODUCTION: BK polyomavirus can lead to hemorrhagic cystitis (BKPyV-HC) in allogeneic stem cell transplantation and therefore to increased morbidity. No causal therapy has been established yet. Cidofovir (CDV) is a nucleotide analog of cytosine that is active against various DNA viruses and it has been described for therapy of BKPyV-HC using two admission routes: intravenous and intravesical. METHODS: We performed a systematic review regarding the comparison of intravenous or intravesical cidofovir in the treatment of BKPyV-HC following adult allogeneic stem cell transplantation...

INTRODUCTION: BK virus (BKV) infection in renal transplant patients may cause kidney allograft dysfunction and graft loss. Accurate determination of BKV viral load is critical to prevent BKV-associated nephropathy (BKVAN) but the cut-off that best predicts BKVAN remains controversial. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the performance of a commercial and an in-house qPCR test for quantitative detection of BK virus in kidney transplant recipients. METHODS: This was a prospective study with kidney transplant recipients from two large university hospitals in Brazil...

BK virus nephropathy (BKVN) is a serious opportunistic infection threatening renal function especially during the first year after transplantation. Its incidence is now on the rise and is closely related to the level of the recipient's immune system inhibition. This is more intensive with current trends in transplantation medicine, where more potent immunosuppressive protocols are used and more aggressive antirejection therapy is applied. In the absence of BK virus (BKV) specific therapy and limited treatment options for advanced BKVN, active screening of BKV replication and subsequent preemptive adjustment of immunosuppression are essential measures to prevent BKVN...

Background Everolimus permits reduced calcineurin inhibitor (CNI) exposure, but the efficacy and safety outcomes of this treatment after kidney transplant require confirmation. Methods In a multicenter noninferiority trial, we randomized 2037 de novo kidney transplant recipients to receive, in combination with induction therapy and corticosteroids, everolimus with reduced-exposure CNI (everolimus arm) or mycophenolic acid (MPA) with standard-exposure CNI (MPA arm). The primary end point was treated biopsy-proven acute rejection or eGFR<50 ml/min per 1...

Human BK polyomavirus (BKV) infection is poorly documented in heart and lung transplant patients. BK viruria and viremia have been estimated to affect 19% and 5% of heart transplant recipients, respectively. Data are limited, especially for lung transplantation, but the proportion of patients progressing from BK viruria to viremia or BKV-related nephropathy (BKVN) appears lower than in kidney transplantation. Nevertheless, a number of cases of BKVN have been reported in heart and lung transplant patients, typically with late diagnosis and generally poor outcomes...

BK polyomavirus (BKV) frequently causes nephropathy (BKVN) in kidney transplant recipients (KTRs). BKV has also been implicated in the etiology of bladder and kidney cancers. We characterized BKV variants from two KTRs who developed BKVN followed by renal carcinoma. Both patients showed a swarm of BKV sequence variants encoding non-silent mutations in surface loops of the viral major capsid protein. The temporal appearance and disappearance of these mutations highlights the intra-patient evolution of BKV. Some of the observed mutations conferred resistance to antibody-mediated neutralization...

INTRODUCTION: BK virus (BKV) infection in renal transplant patients may cause kidney allograft dysfunction and graft loss. Accurate determination of BKV viral load is critical to prevent BKV-associated nephropathy (BKVAN) but the cut-off that best predicts BKVAN remains controversial. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the performance of a commercial and an in-house qPCR test for quantitative detection of BK virus in kidney transplant recipients. METHODS: This was a prospective study with kidney transplant recipients from two large university hospitals in Brazil...

BACKGROUND: Cryptococcosis is an important opportunistic infection of organ transplant recipients. It is the third most common fungal infection of transplant patients and occurs especially in kidney recipients. Cryptococcus neoformans is a ubiquitous fungus which infects humans by inhalation of spores. C. gattii has more recently been recognised as a pathogen. Infection commonly is disseminated affecting mainly the central nervous system and the lungs. Cryptococcoma, a localised form of the disease, has been described in various organs...

BK virus-associated hemorrhagic cystitis (BK-HC) is a common complication after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HCT), with incidences up to 70%. Cidofovir is an antiviral agent with growing evidence as a therapeutic intervention. To assess the safety profile and efficacy of intravenous and intravesical cidofovir in allo-HCT patients with BK-HC, a retrospective study was undertaken of the allo-HCT cohort who received cidofovir for symptomatic BK-HC (hematuria with BK viruria or viremia) from January 2010 until March 2017 in a single transplant center in Ontario, Canada...

BACKGROUND: Although identifying cytological viral inclusions (decoy cells) in the urine is relatively easy, distinguishing between Polyomaviruses BKV and JCV is not possible. Few studies have been published regarding JCV detection in kidney transplant recipients. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the incidence of BKV and JCV DNA in archival slides of urine cytospin material from renal transplant patients. METHODS: A total of 44 urine specimens were evaluated cytologically for the presence of viral inclusions (decoy cells) and by nested polymerase chain reaction to differentiate between JCV and BKV in DNA isolated from archival slides of urine cytospin material...

AIM: The aim of this study is to investigate the clinical features of graft dysfunction following living kidney transplantation and to assess its causes. METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed a series of 366 living kidney transplantation indication biopsies with a clear etiology and diagnosis from July 2003 to June 2016 at our center. The classifications and diagnoses were performed based on clinical and pathological characteristics. All biopsies were evaluated according to the Banff 2007 schema...

BK polyomavirus (BKV) nephropathy is a major concern in renal transplantation. Its main consequence is graft loss, which occurs in more than 50% of the cases. De novo renal cell carcinoma in renal allograft is a very rare event. Most of these tumors are papillary or clear cell carcinomas. We report herein the first case of collecting duct carcinoma of the renal allograft in a kidney-pancreas allograft adult recipient. Collecting duct carcinoma occurs long after the cure of a BKV nephropathy. At this time, BKV viremia and viruria were negative as well as the immunostaining for SV40 in the non-tumor kidney...

BK virus (BKV) infection occurs during childhood and remains latent in the urinary tract. The virus is reactivated in immunosuppressed patients, particularly in those with cellular immunity deficiency, allowing its detection in urine and blood. Nephropathy caused by the virus in renal transplantation recipients may lead to graft failure. The purpose of this study is to know the prevalence of BKV variables in renal transplantation recipients and to evaluate their clinical evolution through molecular methods of "in house" development...

Background: BK virus (BKV) is the cause of nephropathy. Because BKV nephropathy can progress to graft loss, early diagnosis of BKV infection is very important. In this study, we aimed to investigate the utility of quantifying cells with intranuclear inclusion bodies (decoy cells) in urinary sediment for the screening and monitoring of BKV infection in renal transplant recipients at our hospital. Methods: This was a retrospective single-center study. Urine sediment examination was performed at each outpatient visit, and the number of decoy cells was measured in the whole microscopic field...

Reactivation of cytomegalovirus (CMV) and BK polyomavirus (BKV) can result in virus-associated tubulointerstitial nephritis in renal allografts. All those renal biopsies reported as viral cytopathic were isolated and examined by two independent renal histopathologists from our institute and classified as CMV, BKV, and CMV-BKV coinfection-associated viral cytopathic changes with confirmation through polymerase chain reaction technology in either serum or urine or both. All twenty patients were categorized as 10 in CMV, four in BKV, and six were in CMV-BKV coinfection...

Objective: Virus infection is a common complication of transplantation.With the research and application of exosome is becoming more popular, this study focused on whether the virus particles and nucleic acids exist in the exosomes extracted from the plasma of recipients with virus infection after renal transplantation. Methods: A total of 10 independent transplantation recipients at Institute of Organ Transplantation, 309th Hospital of Chinese People's Liberation Army from January 2015 to July 2017 were studied in this study...

BK virus (BKV) is a polyomavirus that is able to cause renal dysfunction in transplanted grafts via BK virus-associated nephritis (BKVAN). This condition was mis-diagnosed in the past due to clinical and histopthological similarities with acute rejection. Due to the prevalence of the virus in the population, it is an important pathogen in this context, and so it is important to understand how this virus functions and its' relationship with the pathogenesis of BKVN. Screening for BKV often reveals viruria and/or viremia, which then manifests as BKVN, which can be asymptomatic or result in clinical features namely renal dysfunction...

BACKGROUND: BK virus nephropathy (BKPyVN) is a major complication after renal transplantation. Little is known about the intra renal immune response during BKPyVN. The role of macrophages remains elusive. The activation of aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) - a transcription factor involved in drug metabolism - plays a key role in inflammation and viral tolerance through modulation of macrophages polarization. Since AHR has not been studied in kidney transplantation, our aim was to compare the AHR expression within renal grafts in BKPyVN with T-cell mediated rejection (TCMR) as a control...