A total of 271 QuantiFERON-CMV samples were collected from 72 patients between January 2007 and November 2008. These patients were either hospitalized in St. James’s Hospital or attending the hospital as outpatients for monitoring after stem cell transplantation.QuantiFERON-CMV was compared with the flow cytometric intracellular cytokine (ICC) assay
results of the QuantiFERON-CMV assay correlated well with the ICC assay, which is considered the gold standard in analysis of HCMV specific immune responses.
and that is was
easy to use, rapid, and gave reproducible resultsAnd the downside?
However, six patients had positive HCMV serology results but negative QuantiFERON-CMV responses.OK, so why?
the discrepancy observed in this study may have been caused by false-positive HCMV serology tests, or, more likely, by undetectable levels of HCMV specific T-cell precursors due to immunosuppression
..one patient who had samples tested with both the QuantiFERON-CMV and the ICC assays was negative for HCMV-specific CD8+ T cells in both assays.What's more, some QuantiFERON-CMV negatives were due to late infections
Three patients from the high and intermediate risk groups had late HCMV infections
...late HCMV infection is characterized by delayed reconstitution of HCMV-specific T-cell responsesNot all QuantiFERON-CMV indeterminates were seen as a test failure
Those in the high-risk group in the current study with indeterminate QuantiFERON-CMV results eventually became positive after a number of months reflecting HCMV-specific CD8+ T-cell reconstitution.
