3 Clinical Trials for Various Conditions
The purpose of this study is to determine whether Fluzone High Dose increases the immune response to the influenza antigens contained in the vaccine compared to standard-dose Fluzone in immunocompromised children and young adults. Safety and efficacy data will also be collected.
CMV infection and disease remain a significant clinical challenge for pediatric solid organ transplant (SOT) recipients. Current prevention strategies are limited to prophylaxis in which antiviral medication is administered for a period of several months or preemption in which close monitoring of CMV viral load from the peripheral blood is performed and treatment is initiated when CMV is detected. Each of these strategies has risks, costs, and limitations associated with it. Recently, assays for measurement of an individual patient's CMV immunity have been developed and are clinically available. One of these is the Viracor CMV T cell Immunity Panel. This flow cytometry based assay is performed on peripheral blood and measures cytokine release in response to CMV antigen stimulation by flow cytometry. The thresholds for this assay that confer protection against CMV infection in pediatric SOT recipients are not known. Defining CMV-specific cell mediated immune response thresholds that confer protection against CMV reactivation could inform patient specific durations of antiviral prophylaxis or pre-emptive surveillance testing. Therefore, the objective of this study is to quantify CMVresponsive T lymphocyte populations by flow cytometry (Viracor CMV T cell Immunity Panel) in pediatric heart, kidney, and liver transplant recipients within the first year of transplantation and to investigate potential threshold values that correlate with protection against CMV infection (DNAemia).
Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is a common infection with 60-90% of all adults worldwide having evidence of having the infection at sometime in their life. Patients who have undergone transplantation are at risk at developing CMV, especially those patients who do not have antibodies to CMV pre-transplant, but received an organ from a recipient who has antibodies to CMV. Usually the disease CMV causes is mild and sometimes patients are not even aware they have the infection without tests to detect the virus. CMV can less commonly cause serious infections that affect many parts of the body including the intestines, liver, or lungs. In rare cases CMV infection in transplant patients can cause death. All patients who receive a transplant are monitored for CMV infection. The purpose of this study is to determine if there is a way the investigators can determine in advance which patients are at greatest risk of CMV infection. Specifically, this study will analyze the immune system of transplant patients to determine if there are specific elements of the immune system that 1) helps protect the body against CMV infection, and 2) helps the body combat CMV once it is infected. Identifying these specific elements of the immune system could improve the physician's ability to monitor the SOT patients for CMV infection, and to help treat CMV in those patients that become infected.