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The diagnosis of pneumonia owing to cytomegalovirus (CMV) in allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplant (HCT) recipients has depended on growing the virus from bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid, having a positive direct fluorescent antibody test, or seeing histopathological evidence of CMV infection in lung tissue. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) on BAL fluid has been used more recently as a technique to detect CMV infection, but its role in diagnosing CMV pneumonitis in HCT recipients has remained undefined, particularly because of pulmonary shedding of CMV after transplantation.
To explore whether qRT-PCR is useful in diagnosing CMV pneumonia in this setting, investigators compared results of qRT-PCR on BAL fluid …