Assessment of the effect of anti-CMV therapy as add on therapy in glioblastoma patients in a double-blinded randomised multicenter trial

Glioblastoma is an incurable brain tumor with very dismal prognosis. The aetiology is unknown and no curative treatment exists. Optimal standard treatment consist of radical surgical followed by combined radio-chemotherapy; 15-26% of patients survive 2 years after diagnosis. Emerging evidence by many research groups world-wide demonstrates that CMV nucleic acids and proteins are present in 90-100% of glioblastoma. We found that higher CMV activity was associated with poor prognosis, which led us to test the possibility of treating CMV in glioblastoma patients to improve outcome. The retrospective data of the first 50 patients who were treated with valganciclovir as add on to standard therapy in glioblastoma patients, demonstrate a remarkably high survival rate: at 2 years, 62% were alive compared with 18% of contemporary controls with similar disease stage, surgical resection grade, and baseline treatment (p