This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

David H. Buss, MD; Modesto Scharyj, MD; Douglas R. White, MD

JAMA. 1980;243(19):1903-1905.

Abstract
Autopsy evidence of herpesvirus infection was found in visceral organs of four leukemic patients who had received large doses of cytarabine (cytosine arabinoside; Ara-C) shortly before their death. In three of these patients the infection was clinically unsuspected; in the fourth, cutaneous herpes zoster developed after administration of 300 mg of cytarabine daily for the preceding five days. Although cytarabine exhibits pronounced in vitro virucidal activity against herpes viruses and has been successfully used in clinical treatment of severe herpesvirus infections, the present findings and a review of the recent literature cast doubt on the antiviral effectiveness of this drug, particularly in already immunosuppressed patients, and suggest instead that such patients actually have an increased risk for development of disseminated herpesvirus infection owing to further depression of host defenses by the drug.

(JAMA 243:1903-1905, 1980)

Author Affiliations
From the Department of Pathology (Drs Buss and Scharyj) and the Department of Medicine, Hematology-Oncology (Dr White), Bowman Gray School of Medicine, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Footnotes
Reprint requests to Department of Pathology, Bowman Gray School of Medicine, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC 27103 (Dr Buss).

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Herpes Zoster in Children With Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia
Novelli et al.
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 1988;142:71-72.
ABSTRACT