Treatment and Prophylaxis of Cytomegalovirus Infection After Bone Marrow Transplantation

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is a ubiquitous human herpes virus (Fig. 1) that can cause primary infection, reactivated infection, or reinfection in recipients of blood components. CMV-associated interstitial pneumonia (IP) (Fig. 2) is the most common infectious cause of death following allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (BMT) for hematologic malignancies and, thus, is an important factor in limiting the success of this procedure (Neiman et al. 1977; Meyers et al. 1982a; Krowka et al. 1985; Cardozo et al. 1985).