American Society for Transplantation and Cellular Therapy Series #11: Updated Cytomegalovirus Guidelines in Hematopoietic Cell Transplant and Cellular Therapy Recipients

Abstract

The Practice Guidelines Committee of the American Society of Transplantation and Cellular Therapy partnered with the society's Transplant Infectious Diseases Special Interest Group to update its previous infectious disease guidelines for the prevention and management of cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection and disease following hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). The two updates, published in 2021, focused on the prevention and management of CMV infection, respectively, including refractory and resistant CMV infections. To best serve clinical providers, each standalone topic in the infectious diseases series has been published in a concise format of frequently asked questions (FAQs). Adult and pediatric infectious diseases and HCT content experts developed the FAQs and the answers; recommendations were graded according to their strength (A-E) and the level of the supporting evidence (I-III). Several advances in CMV prevention and management since 2021 warranted an update to the original third and fourth topics in the series. This eleventh topic in the series focuses on new antiviral treatments for CMV, expanded indications of existing antiviral therapy for the prevention of CMV, and the treatment of CMV in special populations such as CAR T-cell therapy recipients and pediatric transplant recipients.

Keywords: Cellular therapy; Chimeric antigen receptor therapy; Cytomegalovirus; Hematopoietic cell transplant.