QFT Transplant, female surgeon at the operating table
Infectious disease

Protect transplant patients with QuantiFERON

Each year, ~150,000 transplants are performed worldwide, requiring immunosuppressive therapies to prevent acute rejection.

Unfortunately, immunocompromised transplant patients are highly susceptible to post-operative infections.

These conventional and opportunistic infections are an important cause of morbidity and mortality in transplant recipients.

Doctors office, QuantiFERONPrevention (QFT), nurse

Transplant immunosuppression impacts cell-mediated immune responses in transplant recipients. 

Conventional viral load assays and serology testing can detect acute pathogen infection, but they don’t provide a complete picture of your patient’s immune status and cannot predict risk of infection.

Rather than only detecting pathogens, QuantiFERON assays can help you assess your patient’s level of adaptive and acquired specific and non-specific cell-mediated immune response.

Adding this complementary approach to your transplant diagnostics  helps you assess the risk of infection and can help guide your patient management.

Webinar series: T-cell immune monitoring in transplantation

Can T-cell testing help you tailor care for your transplant patients?

Choose from four expert webinars exploring the current use and future potential of T-cell immunity in transplant medicine. You’ll learn about:

  • Roles of T-cell immune response monitoring in the management of transplant patients
  • Risk assessment for infection and graft rejection
  • Clinical value of CMV IGRAs
Laptop, Webinar

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is the most common and problematic viral infection in solid organ transplant recipients. 

What can you do when CMV viral load assays and CMV IgG antibody testing aren’t providing a complete picture of your patient’s immune status?

Recent international transplant guidelines state that the assessment of CMV cell-mediated immunity (CMI) can be used to inform the risk of CMV infection (1). In addition, recent interventional studies have demonstrated the potential clinical utility of using a CMV T cell immunity test  in clinical practice to guide antiviral prophylaxis (2, 3).

Get a more complete picture with QuantiFERON-CMV

QuantiFERON-CMV lets you monitor the level of anti-CMV immunity in patients at risk of developing CMV disease.

The QuantiFERON-CMV assay quantifies in vitro responses to CMV peptide antigens associated with immune control of CMV infection.

Research indicates that QuantiFERON-CMV may have future applications in (2–5):

  • Predicting the risk of CMV disease
  • Guiding antiviral prophylaxis
QuantiFERON-CMV, QF-CMV, blood handling, scientist

An estimated 40–70% of posttransplant mortality is attributable to the immunosuppression of the transplant recipient (6). An over-immunosuppressed patient is susceptible to opportunistic infections and drug toxicity. But an under-immunosuppressed patient can experience allograft rejection (7, 8).

Are crude markers like therapeutic drug monitoring and clinical events enough to predict your patients’ outcomes? To move towards individualized patient management, you need to complement existing methods with novel and objective markers of immune function that can aid in maintaining the optimal therapeutic window for your patients (6, 9).

QFT Transplant, Doctors discussing a patient's medical Chart
Find the right balance with QuantiFERON Monitor

QuantiFERON Monitor (QFM) is the only IGRA available that provides assessment of an individual’s cell-mediated immune response through dual innate and adaptive immune system stimulation, providing both qualitative and quantitative analysis of cell-mediated immunity.  

  • Assesse cell-mediated immune (CMI) response
  • Provide nonpathogen-specific immune monitoring
  • Complement pathogen-specific monitoring
  • Aid in clinical management of solid organ transplant patients

Tuberculosis (TB) infection in transplant recipients carries a high risk of morbidity and mortality. 

Optimal screening and management of TB infection is necessary to protect your patients. That’s why the WHO strongly recommends TB infection screening for all solid organ and hematological transplant patients. Patients should be screened for TB regardless of the local TB burden.

Unlike the TB skin test (TST/PPD), TB testing with QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus is not affected by the BCG vaccine and gives you accurate results in a single visit. 

QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus tubes
All QuantiFERON in vitro diagnostic tests use the same core ELISA testing process for easy integration. Whole blood samples are collected into custom blood collection tubes, which are used to measure interferon gamma production in response to specific or generic immune stimulants.

Adding QuantiFERON Control Panel as an optional external control to your current ELISA workflow can help maintain consistency between ELISA runs and operators.

QF Control Panel standards are designed for straightforward integration into your current ELISA tests – simply process them as you would your current patient samples.

  • Reliable – a standardized external control for QuantiFERON ELISAs
  • Cost-effective – eliminates development and validation of “in-house” controls
  • Easy to use – seamless integration with your current ELISA workflow
QuantiFERON, Control Panel

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References

(1) Kotton, C.N. et al. (2018) The third international consensus guidelines on the management of Cytomegalovirus in solid-organ transplantation. Transplantation 102, 900-931.

(2) Kumar, D. et al. (2017) An interventional study using cell-mediated immunity to personalize therapy for Cytomegalovirus infection after transplantation. Am. J. Transplant. 17, 2468-2473.

(3) Westall, G.P. et al. (2019) A randomized study of Quantiferon CMV-directed versus fixed-duration valganciclovir prophylaxis to reduce late CMV after lung transplantation. Transplantation. 103, 1005-1013.

(4) Manuel, O. et al. (2013) Assessment of cytomegalovirus-specific cell-mediated immunity for the prediction of cytomegalovirus disease in high-risk solid-organ transplant recipients: a multicenter cohort study. Clin. Infect. Dis. 56, 817–824. 

(5) Lisboa, L.F. et al. (2012) Clinical utility of cytomegalovirus cell-mediated immunity in transplant recipients with cytomegalovirus viremia. Transplantation 93, 195-200.

(6) Sood, S. et al. (2014) A novel biomarker of immune function and initial experience in a transplant population. Transpl. J. 97, e50–e51.

(7) Fernández-Ruiz, M., Kumar, D., and Humar, A. (2014) Clinical immune-monitoring strategies for predicting infection risk in solid organ transplantation.Clin. Transl. Immunol. 3, e12.

(8) Sood, S. and Testro, A.G. (2014) Immune monitoring post liver transplant. World J. Transplant. 4, 30.

(9) Mian, M. et al. (2018) Evaluation of a novel global immunity assay to predict infection in organ transplant recipients. Clin. Infect. Dis. 66, 1392-1397.