Efficacy of a low dose of thalidomide in advanced multiple myeloma.

blood products administered to the patients who became SENV-H PCR–positive postoperatively (median, 108 U) and to the ones who remained PCR negative (median, 140 U). The prevalence of SENV-H viremia in Japanese blood donors was shown to vary from 2% to about 10%.1,2 Based on these data, each patient should have received 2 to 14 SENV-H–positive units of blood products. This could explain the observed increase in viremia after transplantation, which is similar to the data previously obtained with GB virus-C/Hepatitis G virus (GBV-C/HGV), where an increase of the prevalence from 6% before to 41% after transplantation was observed.4 In contrast, the prevalence of TTV, a virus that is distantly related to SENV-H, did not significantly increase from 17.3% to 24% after LTX.5 One reason for the unexpected low increase of TTV prevalence in the LTX recipients might be the presence of protective antibodies in the majority of the patients. It was described earlier that reinfection with different SENV-H isolates seems to be common in populations at high risk for blood-borne diseases.6 This would lead to the assumption that no protective immunity is established after SENV-H infection. Although SENV-H has been assigned a possible causative agent of posttransfusion hepatitis, no clinical impact or biochemical differences caused by SENV-H could be observed in this study. Likewise, no significant difference regarding viral titers of HCV were observed between SENV-H viremic and nonviremic patients.