Detection of serologic prevalence of anti-CMV antibodies in thalassemia major patients and blood donors

Background and Objectives Cytomegalovirus (CMV)infection has been recognized as a complication of blood transfusion. Transfusion-related CMV infection produces dramatic problems in immunocompromised patients including organ transplantation recipients, AIDS patients under immunosuppressive therapy, thalassemia major patients, and premature neonates. Regarding the importance of this infection in multitransfused patients and differences in prevalence of transfusion – related CMV infection in various reports, especially in thalassemia major patients, we decided to detect and compare the prevalence of CMV antibodies in thalassemia patients and blood donors. Materials and Methods In this study we detected anti-CMV antibodies (IgG,IgM) by Elisa technique. We tested these antibodies in 55 thalassemia major patients (45 non-splenectomized and 10 splenectomized) and 1040 healthy donors. Results Our results showed that anti-CMV IgG antibody was positive in 89.6% of control group and 100% of thalassamic group, thus indicating of no significant difference in these two groups. Anti-CMV IgM antibody was positive in 0.04% of control group and in 9.1% of thalassemic group showing a significant difference. The prevalence of this antibody was respectively 30% and 4.5% in splenectomized and non-splenectomized groups of patients. Conclusions Absence of significant difference of anti-CMV IgM antibody in patient and control group reflected high frequency of this infection in our population and also the importance of the use of leukocyte free products for high risk blood recipients. Moreover, the significant difference in anti-CMV IgM antibody in splenectomized and non-splenectomized patient groups is related to the role of spleen in clearance of infectious agents and production of IgM antibody in