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J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2001;121:697-701
© 2001 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery

Surgery for Acquired Cardiovascular Disease

Heart valves from pigs and the porcine endogenous retrovirus: Experimental and clinical data to assess the probability of porcine endogenous retrovirus infection in human subjects

From Leibniz Research Laboratories for Biotechnology and Artificial Organs (LEBAO),^a Medical School Hannover; National Research Center for Biotechnology,^b Braunschweig; and the Department of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery,^c Medical School Hannover, Hannover, Germany.

Received for publication June 8, 2000. Revisions requested Aug 11, 2000; revisions received Sept 18, 2000. Accepted for publication Oct 25, 2000. Address for reprints: Ajay Kumar Moza, Medical School Hannover, Division of Cardio-Thoracic and Vascular Surgery, Carl-Neuberg-Str. 1, D-30625 Hannover, Germany (E-mail: moza{at}thg.mh-hannover.de).

Abstract

Objective: Replacement of heart valves in human subjects has become a routine procedure in cardiac operations. We sought to investigate whether commercially available glutaraldehyde-fixed porcine heart valve prostheses cause porcine endogenous retrovirus infection in human subjects because recent studies revealed that human cells can be infected with porcine endogenous retrovirus.
Methods: Blood samples of 18 patients who underwent aortic or mitral valve replacement with porcine heart valves were collected 6 months to 3 years after operation and tested for porcine endogenous retrovirus by means of polymerase chain reaction and reverse transcriptase–polymerase chain reaction. In addition, we tried to trace porcine endogenous retrovirus in 3 commercially available, glutaraldehyde-fixed, porcine heart valves.
Results: Porcine endogenous retrovirus can be easily detected in native porcine heart valves and degrades completely within 1 week of fixation in glutaraldehyde. In all 3 commercially available porcine heart valves, no traces of porcine endogenous retrovirus were found. All blood samples showed negative test results for the porcine endogenous retrovirus genome.
Conclusion: Our results indicate that glutaraldehyde fixation of porcine heart valves reliably prevents cross-species transmission of porcine endogenous retrovirus.

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