Perrucci Gianluca Lorenzo, Sommariva Elena, Ricci Veronica, Songia Paola, D'Alessandra Yuri, Poggio Paolo, Pompilio Giulio, Polvani Gianluca, Guarino Anna
Unità di Biologia Vascolare e Medicina Rigenerativa, Centro Cardiologico Monzino IRCCS, 20138 Milano, Italy.
Unità di Proteomica Cardiovascolare, Centro Cardiologico Monzino IRCCS, 20138 Milano, Italy.
Diagnostics (Basel). 2021 Apr 20;11(4):731. doi: 10.3390/diagnostics11040731.
The 2019 Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak had detrimental effects on essential medical services such as organ and tissue donation. Lombardy, one of the most active Italian regions in organ/tissue procurement, has been strongly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. To date, data concerning the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission after tissue transplantation are controversial. Here, we aimed to evaluate the presence/absence of SARS-CoV-2 in different cardiac tissues eligible for transplantation obtained from Lombard donors. We used cardiovascular tissues from eight donors potentially suitable for pulmonary valve transplantation. All donor subjects involved in the study returned negative results for the SARS-CoV-2 RNA molecular tests (quantitative real-time reverse-transcription PCR, qRT-PCR, and chip-based digital PCR) in nasopharyngeal swabs (NPS) or bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL). None of the eight donors included in this study revealed the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 viral genome. However, evaluation of the protein content of pulmonary vein wall (PVW) tissue revealed variable levels of SARS-CoV-2 nucleoprotein signal in all donors. Our study demonstrated for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, that viral nucleoprotein but not viral RNA was present in the examined tissue bank specimens, suggesting the need for caution and in-depth investigations on implantable tissue specimens collected during the COVID-19 pandemic period.
2019年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）疫情对器官和组织捐赠等基本医疗服务产生了不利影响。伦巴第是意大利器官/组织获取最活跃的地区之一，受到了COVID-19大流行的严重影响。迄今为止，关于组织移植后SARS-CoV-2传播风险的数据存在争议。在此，我们旨在评估从伦巴第捐赠者获取的不同适合移植的心脏组织中是否存在SARS-CoV-2。我们使用了来自八名可能适合肺动脉瓣移植的捐赠者的心血管组织。参与研究的所有捐赠者在鼻咽拭子（NPS）或支气管肺泡灌洗（BAL）中的SARS-CoV-2 RNA分子检测（定量实时逆转录PCR、qRT-PCR和基于芯片的数字PCR）结果均为阴性。本研究纳入的八名捐赠者均未检测到SARS-CoV-2病毒基因组的存在。然而，对肺静脉壁（PVW）组织蛋白质含量的评估显示，所有捐赠者中SARS-CoV-2核蛋白信号水平各不相同。据我们所知，我们的研究首次证明，在所检查的组织库标本中存在病毒核蛋白而非病毒RNA，这表明在COVID-19大流行期间收集的可植入组织标本需要谨慎对待并进行深入调查。
