Strategies for Diagnosis of Xenotransplant-associated Retroviral Infections.
The demand for tissue for human-to-human transplantation consistently exceeds the available supply, resulting in attempts to use organs or tissues from animals; a field known as xenotransplantation. A major concern in xenotransplantation is the risk of infection of human recipients with new xenogeneic infectious agents and subsequent transmission of these infections to the general population. Of particular importance are infections with retroviruses that persist in the host and may allow silent human-to-human transmission. Pigs and baboons are considered as sources for human xenotransplants and are known to be infected with a number of retroviruses. Adequate diagnosis of pig and baboon retrovirus infections is required for pretransplant screening of animal sources to minimize risks of transmission to recipients and also for monitoring post-transplant infections in the human recipients. Strategies for serologic, molecular, and virologic diagnosis are described. Examples of virus-specific methods for detection of known retroviruses are also shown. Emphasis is made on the need for baboon and pig cell-specific polymerase chain reaction assays that are necessary for interpretation of polymerase chain reaction results of endogenous retroviruses. Generic methods for detection of novel or variant retrovirus are described and include screening by Amp-RT, an ultrasensitive reverse transcriptase assay.
Heneine
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Retrovirus Diseases Branch, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA