Work

High Serum Cholesterol Levels Are Associated with Herpes Zoster Infection after Heart Transplantation

Year: 2009

Type: letter

Abstract: To the Editor—Sun and Singh [1] reported that statins might improve morbidity and mortality attributable to sepsis or infection in organ transplant recipients. Statins have antiviral effects against human immunodeficiency virus type 1 [2], BK virus, cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus, and hepatitis C virus [1]. Cholesterol is required for varicella zoster virus cell entry [3, 4]. The relationship between serum cholesterol levels and risk of varicella zoster virus infection after transplant, if any, is unknown. We performed a case-control analysis to test the hypothesis that serum cholesterol level is associated with an increased risk of zoster in heart transplant patients. We studied patients who underwent heart transplantation at Mayo Clinic from January 1994 through June 2006, from 1-month pre- through 12-months post-transplantation. Details of this cohort have been reported elsewhere [5, 6]. Case patients were those who received a diagnosis of post-transplantation zoster. For each case patient, 3 individually matched control patients with no history of zoster, matched by age, sex, and transplantation year, were randomly selected. The degree of likeness between case patients and control patients was assessed using conditional logistic regression. Initial analysis compared mean serum cholesterol level within the first post-transplantation year in case patients and control patients. A second analysis compared serum cholesterol level within the month before the zoster episode in case patients with the mean serum cholesterol level within the first post-transplantation year in case patients.

Source: Clinical Infectious Diseases

DOI: 10.1086/649005