TY - JOUR T1 - A Cluster of Fatal Tick-borne Encephalitis Virus Infection in Organ Transplant Setting. JF - The Journal of infectious diseases//J Infect Dis Y1 - 2017 A1 - Lipowski, Dariusz A1 - Popiel, Marta A1 - Perlejewski, Karol A1 - Nakamura, Shota A1 - Bukowska-Osko, Iwona A1 - Rzadkiewicz, Ewa A1 - Dzieciatkowski, Tomasz A1 - Milecka, Anna A1 - Wenski, Wojciech A1 - Ciszek, Michal A1 - Debska-Slizien, Alicja A1 - Ignacak, Ewa A1 - Cortes, Kamila Caraballo A1 - Pawelczyk, Agnieszka A1 - Horban, Andrzej A1 - Radkowski, Marek A1 - Laskus, Tomasz AB - Background.: Tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV) infection has become a major health problem in Europe and is currently a common cause of viral brain infection in many countries. Encephalitis in transplant recipients, althrough rare, is becoming a recognized complication. Our study provides the first description of transmission of TBEV through transplantation of solid organs., Methods.: Three patients who received solid organ transplants from a single donor (2 received kidney, and 1 received liver) developed encephalitis 17-49 days after transplantation and subsequently died. Blood and autopsy tissue samples were tested by next-generation sequencing (NGS) and reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)., Results.: All 3 recipients were first analyzed in autopsy brain tissue samples and/or cerebrospinal fluid by NGS, which yielded 24-52 million sequences per sample and 9-988 matched TBEV sequences in each patient. The presence of TBEV was confirmed by RT-PCR in all recipients and in the donor, and direct sequencing of amplification products corroborated the presence of the same viral strain., Conclusions.: We demonstrated transmission of TBEV by transplantation of solid organs. In such a setting, TBEV infection may be fatal, probably due to pharmacological immunosuppression. Organ donors should be screened for TBEV when coming from or visiting endemic areas. M1 - ih3, 0413675 CY - United States VL - 215 SN - 1537-66130022-1899 CP - 6 L2 - http://ovidsp.ovid.com/ovidweb.cgi?T=JS&PAGE=reference&D=prem&NEWS=N&AN=28453842 ID - 4582 ER -