Diagnosis and monitoring of cytomegalovirus infection by the quantification of viral load in dried blood spots samples

Abstract

Evaluation of: Limaye AP, Santo Hayes TK, Huang ML, et al. Quantitation of cytomegalovirus DNA load in dried blood spots correlates well with plasma viral load. J. Clin. Microbiol. 51, 2360–2364 (2013).Cytomegalovirus (CMV) represents the major infectious cause of birth defects, as well as an important pathogen for immune-compromised individuals. Several studies described the use of dried blood spots (DBS) for the detection of CMV DNA for late diagnosis of congenital CMV infection in cases of strong clinical suspicion. In the article under evaluation, Limaye et al. perform for the first time the quantification of CMV in pairs of finger-stick DBS and plasma samples collected from transplant patients. The work concluded that finger-stick DBS could be an alternative sample type for quantification of CMV load that correlates well with plasma levels. Prospective trials to evaluate the use of DBS for monitoring CMV load in transplant recipients will be required.