A research team, led by Boston-based Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital investigators, identified a novel antiviral drug, letermovir, which can protect against cytomegalovirus infection among transplant patients.
Cytomegalovirus is a common virus that causes serious health problems for people with weakened immune systems, as well as for babies infected with the virus before they are born, according to the CDC. The virus stays in a person's body for life and can reactivate.
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The study involved 565 adult patients at 67 research centers in 20 countries. It compared letermovir to placebo in preventing an active CMV infection following transplant with donor stem cells. The patients all carried a CMV infection from earlier in life that was now dormant.
Twenty-four weeks after completing up to 14 weeks of treatment, 61 percent of the patients receiving a placebo had developed a CMV infection that was serious enough to require treatment or had discontinued the trial. In comparison, only 38 percent of those treated with letermovir developed that level of CMV infection or did not complete the trial.
The researchers presented their study at the 2017 Bone Marrow Transplant Tandem Meetings of the American Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation and the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 22, 2017.
"Letermovir will allow many patients to avoid infection, usually with no or mild side effects, and seems to provide a survival benefit in the first six months post-transplant," said Francisco Marty, MD, an infectious disease specialist at Dana-Farber and BWH and the study's lead author.