Background: The polymorphisms in host innate immunoregulatory genes may predispose adult patients after liver transplantation (LT) to infectious complications. The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of these polymorphisms on the development of infectious complications in pediatric LT.
Patients and Methods: Two hundred and fifty six pediatric patients, who underwent living donor LT between 2005 and 2019 at the National Children’ Hospital, were enrolled to this study. The average age at LT was 39.8 months and the most common original liver disease was cholestatic liver disease (59.0%). The single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of FCGR2A [131H/R] and FCGR3A [158F/V] genes, encoding the Fc gamma receptor (FcγR), were analyzed in relation to the development of postoperative infectious complications, bloodstream infection (BSI), cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection, and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection, after LT.
Results: The incidence of bloodstream infection (BSI) was 18.4%, 47 patients. The most common pathogen of BSI was methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus species, 46.0%. Although BSI occurred in the FCGR3A [158F/V or F/F] patients, 20.7%, none of the patients with the FCGR3A [158V/V] experienced BSI. The FCGR2A [131H/R or R/R] patients showed lower incidence of BSI than the FCGR2A [131H/H] patients, although it was not significantly different between the two groups. The predominant pathogen of BSI in the FCGR3A [158F/V or F/F] patients was gram-positive cocci (68.0%). There were no differences in the incidence of CMV infection and EBV infection with respect to the gene polymorphisms.
Conclusions: Pediatric LT populations showed the correlations between FcγR SNPs and the development of BSI after LT.