A successful treatment for chronic active Epstein-Barr virus disease with Nephrotic Syndrome

Chronic active Epstein-Barr virus (CAEBV) disease is more likely to occur when a patient is on immunosuppressive therapy for any disease or is susceptible to infection, and the prognosis is poor without appropriate treatment, including hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). In addition to HSCT, several other chemotherapy regimens have been reported, but all of them are difficult to maintain in remission. Without HSCT, survival rates have been reported to be 50% in 5 years and 25% in 15 years. This is a report of a 13-year-old boy who developed CAEBV disease during cyclosporine A (CyA) treatment for the steroid-dependent nephrotic syndrome (SDNS). Since SDNS precluded HSCT or chemotherapy, CyA was tapered off based on the belief that alleviating his immunosuppressed state would decrease the CAEBV disease. We decided to gradually reduce the CyA dose to activate T-cell immunity, while periodically monitoring the EBV viral load. Finally, we found an appropriate dose that could suppress both CAEBV disease and SDNS, and it lasted for more than 9 years. No case has been reported to date in which a patient developed CAEBV disease while receiving immunosuppressive drugs for the primary disease, and both diseases were controlled only by reducing the dose of immunosuppressive drugs. In this report, we show that dose reduction of immunosuppressive agents without chemotherapy or HSCT is an effective option for the treatment of CAEBV disease in patients receiving immunosuppressive agents.