Fax +41 61 306 12 34 E-Mail karger@karger.ch www.karger.com Original Paper Med Princ Pract 2008;17:66–70 DOI: 10.1159/000109593 Is Combined Pretransplantation Seropositivity of Kidney Transplant Recipients for Cytomegalovirus Antigens (pp150 and pp28) a Predictor for Protection against Infection? S. Essa a A. Pacsa a T. Said b M.R.N. Nampoory b R. Raghupathy a K.V. Johny b W. Al-Nakib a M. Al-Mosawy b a Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Kuwait University, and b Hamad Al-Essa Organ Transplant Center, Ministry of Health, Kuwait nemia assay. Results: Of the five CMV-related peptide anti- gens, only gB antigen showed response to the antibody in 10/23 (43.5%) antigen-positive patients and 9/46 antigen- negative patients and the difference was statistically signifi- cant (p = 0.048). On the other hand, there was no significant difference in antibody responses between the antigen-pos- itive and antigen-negative KR to the other four CMV peptide antigens (p 1 0.05). However, among the antigen-positive KR there was only 1 patient who had antibodies to both pp150 and pp28 antigen, while among the antigen-negative KR, 22 of 46 (47.8%) had the antibodies (p ! 0.001). Conclusion: The findings suggest that the combined presence of antibodies against the pp150 and pp28 antigens may indicate a lower risk of CMV reactivation after kidney transplantation. Copyright © 2007 S. Karger AG, Basel Introduction A common complication following organ transplanta- tion is infection with cytomegalovirus (CMV) [1, 2] , a ubiquitous member of the -herpesvirus group. CMV in- fection occurs in the majority of humans, mainly during the first two decades of life. Although the main host de- fense against CMV is cell-mediated immunity, several Key Words Kidney transplantation  Cytomegalovirus infection  Antibody responses  Peptide antigens Abstract Objective: This study was aimed at detecting antibodies to the antigens which may contribute to protection against cy- tomegalovirus (CMV) infection after organ transplantation. Materials and Methods: A total of 203 kidney transplant pa- tients were enrolled in the study. Based on CMV antigenemia assay, 23 patients were antigen-positive and of the remain- ing 180 antigen-negative patients, 46 were selected as con- trols matched for age, gender and source of kidney. The 69 kidney recipients (KR) had CMV antibody due to previous in- fection and were followed up for a period of 6 months after transplantation for the development of active CMV infec- tions by the antigenemia assay. Antibody responses to five CMV-related peptide antigens (pp65, gB, pp150, pp28 and pp38) were investigated by enzyme immunoassay and their presence was correlated with the results of the CMV antige- Received: June 27, 2006 Revised: February 7, 2007 Sahar Essa Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine Kuwait University, PO Box 24923 13110 Safat (Kuwait) Tel. +965 498 6521, Fax +965 533 2719, E-Mail sahar@hsc.edu.kw © 2007 S. Karger AG, Basel 1011–7571/08/0171–0066$24.50/0 Accessible online at: www.karger.com/mpp This research was supported by Kuwait University grant No. MI03/02.