Analysis of CMV status from buccal swabs

CMV status

Non-invasive oral sampling for CMV IgG determination creates new opportunities and shortens the process between donor selection and transplantation. We derive CMV serostatus from dried swabs with good sensitivity and specificity. Therefore, this provides a non-invasive alternative to plasma-based CMV monitoring for non-diagnostic purposes such as donor screening in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation or population studies.

Human cytomegalovirus is prevalent throughout all geographic locations and socioeconomic groups. Most healthy people who got infected with CMV at some time in life after birth have no continuous symptoms because the virus is effectively controlled by the immune system. However, CMV infections can be life-threatening for immunocompromised transplant recipients if the CMV status is not matched. CMV infection status is examined by probing for anti-CMV-IgG antibodies applying an ELISA assay.

For the performance of the assay, it is required that the samples are sent to our lab within three (3) weeks following collection. Testing results for CMV can be obtained for > 75% of samples. The assay was validated to yield > 98% accuracy with several thousand samples from German donors.

Link to our paper "Noninvasive Determination of CMV Serostatus From Dried Buccal Swab Samples"