CMV Status Service
Human cytomegalovirus (CMV) is prevalent throughout all geographic locations and socioeconomic groups. Most healthy people who got infected with CMV at some time in life after birth have no continuous symptoms because the virus is effectively controlled by the immune system. However, CMV infections can be life-threatening for immunocompromised transplant recipients if the CMV status is not matched. Therefore, the knowledge of the CMV antibody status of a potential stem cell donor is important to avoid post-transplantation complications for a patient. Common CMV assays are based on blood samples.
However, nowadays stem cell donor registration is largely based on buccal swab sampling. Consequently, we developed and validated a novel workflow, which is able to determine the CMV IgG status from buccal swabs. CMV infection status is examined by probing for anti-CMV-IgG antibodies applying an ELISA assay.
Non-invasive oral sampling for CMV IgG determination creates new opportunities and shortens the process between donor selection and transplantation. Testing results can be obtained for > 75% of samples. The assay was validated to yield > 98% accuracy. Therefore, this provides a noninvasive alternative to plasmabased CMV monitoring for nondiagnostic purposes such as donor screening in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation or population studies.
For the performance of the assay, it is required that the samples are sent to our lab within three (3) weeks following collection. Testing results can be obtained for > 75 % of samples. The assay was validated to yield > 98% accuracy with several thousand samples from German donors.
