1706 - Association between Cytomegalovirus Infection/Disease and Morbidity and Mortality in Kidney Transplantation: A Systematic Literature Review of Observational Studies

Background: Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is a common pathogen in kidney transplant recipients (KTRs). KTRs may develop CMV viremia that is asymptomatic (‘CMV infection’) or associated with clinical and laboratory findings (‘CMV disease’) such as fever, leukopenia/neutropenia, and malaise (‘CMV syndrome’), and/or evidence of specific organ(s) involvement (‘CMV end-organ disease’). The extent to which CMV affects morbidity such as acute rejection (AR), graft loss (GL), other opportunistic infections (OI), or mortality in KTRs has not been systematically evaluated recently. Therefore, we examined the association between CMV infection/disease and morbidity and mortality in KTRs using a systematic review of observational studies from the last decade.

Methods: MEDLINE and Embase were searched to identify observational studies published between January 2008 and November 2018 reporting outcomes of interest by CMV status.  Meta-analysis was used to derive pooled odds ratio (pOR) with 95% confidence intervals(CIs) using the random-effects models and I² statistics to estimate heterogeneity between studies using R version 3.5.1.

Results: Of 1,860 retrieved citations, 23 studies with a total of 6,994 KTRs met inclusion criteria. The majority of studies were conducted in Europe (N=14) and included participants regardless of donor/recipient CMV serostatus (N=14). Included studies reported outcomes by different clinical manifestations of CMV. Overall, CMV infection/disease was associated with an increased odd of AR, with significant heterogeneity. CMV infection/disease was also associated with an increase in the odds of GL  and mortality compared to no CMV infection/disease without heterogeneity (Figure 1). A higher rate of all-cause hospital readmission and a greater mean number of OI episodes were reported with CMV infection/disease in a single study.Pooled Estimates on the Association between Outcomes and CMV Infection/Disease among Individuals undergoing Kidney Transplant


Conclusion: CMV infection/disease was associated with increased mortality and GL in adults with KT. The association between CMV and AR remained similar in direction with high heterogeneity limiting the  robustness  of the conclusion. Nonetheless, our analysis underscores the importance of interventions to reduce the incidence of CMV infection/disease to reduce mortality and GL in KTRs even in the current era.