BK Virus in Kidney Transplant Recipients The Influence of Immunosuppression.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Transplantation Volume 2011, Article ID 750836, 9 pages doi:10.1155/2011/750836 Clinical Study BK Virus in Kidney Transplant Recipients: The Influence of Immunosuppression Katherine A. Barraclough,1 Nicole M. Isbel,1 Christine E. Staatz,2 and David W. Johnson1 1 Department of Nephrology, University of Queensland at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, Brisbane, QLD 4102, Australia 2 School of Pharmacy, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia Correspondence should be addressed to Katherine A. Barraclough, katherine barraclough@.au Received 14 January 2011; Revised 5 March 2011; Accepted 27 March 2011 ¨ Academic Editor: Bernhard K. Kramer Copyright © 2011 Katherine A. Barraclough et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The incidence of BK virus infection in kidney transplant recipients has increased over recent decades, coincident with the use of more potent immunosuppression. More importantly, posttransplant BK virus replication has emerged as an important cause of graft damage and subsequent graft loss. Immunosuppression has been accepted as a major risk for BK virus replication. However, the specific contribution of individual immunosuppressive medications to this risk has not been well established. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the recent literature on the influence of the various immunosuppressant drugs and drug combinations on posttransplant BK virus replication. Evidence supporting the various immunosuppression reduction strategies utilise