Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infection Among Adult Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant Recipients in India
My DM thesis work published in the Journal of Global Infectious Diseases
The procedure of stem cell transplantation has gone through refinements and fine tunings over the last several decades after E.Donnall Thomas did the first allogeneic transplantation in 1957. I remember as a child, reading and wondering with awe that bone marrow could be transplanted, and that it’s a cure for many illnesses. Now it has been simplified to such an extent that even one’s own stem cells can be harvested from peripheral blood and injected back in to the patient - Autologous stem cell transplantation! However, like any other transplantation procedures, this knocks down the patient’s immunity to a certain extent and can predispose him/her to infections.
In India, dare I say respiratory viral infections were not taken as seriously before the covid-19 pandemic asserted respiratory viruses’ right of being taken seriously. Influenza, RSV, HMPV all have come in limelight now. I consider it a blessing and a milestone in my career that I had the opportunity of working on and finding out the burden that the Respiratory Syncytial Virus puts on hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients in India. To the best of our knowledge this was the first study in India to capture this data among the hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients.
Read the article below.
Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infection among Adults after Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation