Journal articles in early May focused on the detection of various events following transplantation: the early identification of BK virus in kidney recipients and the detection of heart disease in heart transplant patients.
* Investigators wrote on May 4 in The New England Journal of Medicine that, to identify a risk of viral nephropathy in kidney transplant recipients, they used polymerase chain reaction to test for polyomarvirus type BK virus (2000;342:1309-1315). In some patients, they were able to identify the virus months before it became clinically evident. Early identification of the BK virus is important because its reactivation has been increasingly recognized as a cause of graft dysfunction and loss among patients treated with immunosuppressive regimens that include tacrolimus of mycophenolate mofetil, reported Volker Nickeleit, MD, and colleagues at the University of Basel in Switzerland.
* Researchers at Humboldt University of Berlin and the German Heart Institute in Berlin found electron-beam computed tomography (EBCT) to be a promising noninvasive test for the detection of coronary heart disease in recipients of heart transplants. Friedrich D. Knollmann, MD, and coauthors reported on May 2 in Circulation that EBCT calcium scoring "is a highly sensitive method for detecting coronary artery stenosis and predicts the degree of intimal proliferation in heart transplant recipients" (2000;101:2078-2082). This inexpensive, noninvasive test, they continued "may serve to detect the presence of preexistent coronary heart disease of the graft early after transplantation, to select high-risk patients for invasive testing, and possibly even to follow the course of coronary allograft disease in therapeutic trials."
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