Transplant infectious disease : an official journal of the Transplantation Society
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With COVID-19 pandemic, concerns about kidney transplant recipients are rising. However, the incidence, clinical course, outcome, and predictive factors of disease severity are obscured. ⋯ Low rate of admission in transplant recipients specially in the very first years of transplantation might be due to protective effects of immunosuppressive agents against cytokine storm or modification of immunity function. We suggest evaluation of T-cell number, function, and cytokine profile as a guide to manage COVID-19 mainly in patients with higher risk of mortality.
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
COVID-19 in solid organ transplant recipients: Dynamics of disease progression and inflammatory markers in ICU and non-ICU admitted patients.
COVID-19 infection varies in severity from minimal symptoms to critical illness associated with a hyperinflammatory response. Data on disease progression in immunosuppressed solid organ transplant (SOT) recipients are limited. ⋯ Our data indicate that SOT is associated with high rate of hospitalization, ICU admission, and death from COVID-19 compared to data in the general population of patients with COVID-19. Despite reduction in immunosuppression, suspected rejection was rare. The clinical course and trend of laboratory biomarkers is biphasic with a later, pronounced peak in inflammatory markers seen in those admitted to an ICU. CRP is a useful marker to monitor disease progression in SOT.
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Respiratory viral infections are a major cause of morbidity and mortality among stem cell transplant recipients. While there is a substantial amount of information on prognostic factors and response to ribavirin therapy is available for RSV infections, this information is largely lacking for hMPV. ⋯ We could detect no differences between RSV and hMPV with respect to progression to LRTI, risk of respiratory failure or need for mechanical ventilation and virus-associated death. The ISI index is of predictive value in hMPV patients with a high ISI score and treatment with oral ribavirin has an equivalent protective effect in RSV and hMPV patients. Treatment of LRTI with intravenous ribavirin results in a similar outcome in RSV- and hMPV-infected patients. We could not detect any benefit of adjunctive treatment with immunoglobulins in both primary and secondary LRTI. No role of viral load as an independent prognostic marker could be detected either for progression to LRTI or death.
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Case Reports
Threatening drug-drug interaction in a kidney transplant patient with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
During the novel coronavirus pandemic, organ transplant recipients represent a frail susceptible category due to long-term immunosuppressive therapy. For this reason, clinical manifestations may differ from general population and different treatment approaches may be needed. We present the case of a 36-year-old kidney-transplanted woman affected by Senior-Loken syndrome diagnosed with COVID-19 pneumonia after a contact with her positive mother. ⋯ The patient was left with steroid therapy alone. The peculiarity of clinical presentation and the management difficulties represent the flagship of our case report. We stress the need for guidelines in transplant recipients with COVID-19 infection with particular regard to the management of therapy.