Dr. Diana Florescu performed a large retrospective study, evaluating clinical presentation and outcomes of Norovirus infections in intestinal allograft compared to the native intestine. The study was done in collaboration with Dr. Pearlie Chong and included patients transplanted at UNMC and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The study showed that intestinal transplant recipients tend to have more severe norovirus enteritis reflected in more frequent hospital admissions and requirement of prolonged intravenous hydration, but less likely to have nausea and vomiting at presentation compared with other allograft recipients. Understanding the differences in clinical course of norovirus enteritis between different allografts would help to understand who might require more aggressive intervention or might benefit from novel therapeutic agents. The findings suggest that the intestinal allograft might be infected earlier after transplantation than the native intestine.
This research collaboration led to the invitation to present our findings at the prestigious 26th International Congress of the Transplantation Society in Hong Kong. Our findings have been fully detailed in papers published Transplant Infectious Diseases in 2017.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28273399
Content courtesy of Dr. Florescu.