Torque Teno virus — a potential biomarker in monitoring immunological competence

Abstract

Infectious complications and rejection processes constitute two major types of post-transplant complications. The gold standard of post-transplant pa­tients’ management is to keep recipient’s immune system at such optimal level of competence that is low enough to prevent rejection being the same time high enough to protect them from serious infectious complications. Unfortunately, at present, there are no tools that would allow for the precise defining the optimal immunosuppression in individual recipients. The development of biomarkers that would help de­termine the state of immunosuppression remains the holy grail of current transplantology. Torque Teno virus (TTV) is a highly prevalent, nonpathogenic DNA virus emerging as a promising marker since its levels seem to reflect the level of immune competence of the host. Data collected so far implicate, that TTV may be clini­cally useful in predicting the risk of both rejection and infectious complications in grafts’ recipients.