title: Morphological spectrum of polyoma virus disease in renal allografts: diagnostic accuracy of urine cytology.
abstract: The morphological features of polyoma virus disease (PVDz) in 571 concurrent urine and biopsy samples from 413 patients are described. In 54 patients PV was found in both biopsy and urine samples. Histologically, PV presented as: (a) mild, viral cytopathic/cytolytic changes, with absent or minimal inflammation involving isolated tubules; (b) moderate and severe, cytopathic/cytolytic changes associated with patchy or diffuse tubulo-interstitial inflammation and atrophy; (c) advanced, graft sclerosis with rare or absent viral cytopathic changes, indistinguishable from chronic allograft nephropathy. Histological progression from mild to moderate or severe disease was seen in 28 patients. The mean post-transplantation time at diagnosis was similar in patients with mild or moderate-severe renal involvement (1.05 and 1.3 years, respectively). All patients presented with similarly increased values of serum creatinine (mean 1.35 mg/dL). There was strong correlation between the number of PV infected cells in urine and the concurrent biopsies (p = 0.0001). In 13 patients PV was found only in urine; of these, two developed PVDz later. The positive predictive value of a positive urine was 90%, the negative predictive value of a negative urine was 99% and the accuracy of the test was 97%. We conclude that urine cytology is useful to evaluate renal transplant patients with PV reactivation because sloughed tubular cells are found in urine and positive urine samples are a consistent manifestation of PV renal involvement.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore 21201, USA.
authors.forename: R C
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Drachenberg
authors.forename: C B
authors.initials: CB
authors.lastname: Drachenberg
authors.forename: J C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Papadimitriou
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ramos
authors.forename: J C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Fink
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Wali
authors.forename: M R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Weir
authors.forename: C B
authors.initials: CB
authors.lastname: Cangro
authors.forename: D K
authors.initials: DK
authors.lastname: Klassen
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Khaled
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Cunningham
authors.forename: S T
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Bartlett
mesh_terms: D001284:Atrophy; D001706:Biopsy; D018450:Disease Progression; D006801:Humans; D007249:Inflammation; D016030:Kidney Transplantation / Q000473:pathology; D007684:Kidney Tubules / Q000473:pathology / Q000821:virology; D019520:Living Donors; D027601:Polyomavirus Infections / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000652:urine; D011183:Postoperative Complications / Q000821:virology*; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D014184:Transplantation, Homologous; D014556:Urine / Q000166:cytology