CMV in organ transplantation

CMV is a hard infection to treat in solid organ transplants. A nice consensus statement came out recently in Transplantation April 2010 issue going over medications. ( similar post on nephronpower for question discussion)
Based on these recs, 
1.IV ganciclovir is " gold standard" for CMV disease
2. The VICTOR trial compared valcyte to ganciclovir and was equally effective ( 900mg PO BID)
3. Do genotype resistance testing for CMV and if it is UL97 major mutation, likely will have ganciclovir resistance. If its a minor mutation or a pol mutation can still use ganciclovir but high doses. A major mutation requires switching to foscarnet.
4. If foscarnet is causing renal damage and or not working, other drugs have been tried.
5. Cidofovir has been tried in adenovirus, bk virus and CMV as well. There is little information on efficacy of cidofivir in single organ transplants but its use in stem cell transplants is also with mixed results.
6. Immunoglobulins containing CMV antibodies or cytogam has been used with good results in Stem cell transplants.  IVIG might have similar effects but no cases that I could find have been documented use of it. This should more likely be reserved for organ damage from CMV( retinitis, pulmonary damage, GI)
7. Leflunomide was reported to clear CMV in one case of Stem cell and one of a renal transplant patient.
8. Other drugs that have shown some anti CMV properties are sirolimus, artesunate and maribavir( experimental)


So the question we have up here, really there is no right answer as all of those drugs have shown some effect on CMV but IVIG is the least evidence about. I am sure its being used for CMV viremia or disease as the concept is the same as cytogam.


Check out the review article with good statements on how to manage difficult CMV viremia and disease patients.