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Case report
Fatal donor-derived Kaposi sarcoma following liver transplantation
  1. Matthew Moore McCrea Copeland1,
  2. James Trainor2,
  3. W Johnny Cash1 and
  4. Conor Braniff1
  1. 1Regional Liver Unit, Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, Belfast, UK
  2. 2Institute of Pathology, Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, Belfast, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Matthew Moore McCrea Copeland; mcopeland03{at}qub.ac.uk

Abstract

Human herpesvirus-8 (HHV8) is a recognised precursor for a number of neoplastic and non-neoplastic processes. Immunosuppressed recipients of both solid organ and haematopoietic stem cell transplants are at risk of life-threatening lytic reactivations of HHV8-infected B-lymphocytes, primary infections after receiving grafts from HHV8-seropositive donors and more rarely by the direct transplantation of malignant Kaposi sarcoma cells seeded within graft tissue. We describe the case of an HHV8-seronegative patient with confirmed, post-orthotopic liver transplant transmission of HHV8 from a seropositive donor with quantitative evidence of viraemia and subsequent development of disseminated visceral and cutaneous Kaposi sarcoma with a rapidly fatal outcome.

  • malignant disease and immunosuppression
  • gastroenterology
  • liver disease
  • infectious diseases
  • transplantation

https://doi.org/10.1136/bcr-2020-236061

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors MMMC, JT, WJC and CB contributed to the following: conception and design of the case report; drafting the article; critical revision of the article and final approval of the version to be published.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.