Latent infection of human herpesvirus 7 in CD4+ T lymphocytes

✍ Scribed by Fumi Miyake; Tetsushi Yoshikawa; He Sun; Akira Kakimi; Masahiro Ohashi; Shiho Akimoto; Yukihiro Nishiyama; Yoshizo Asano

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 110 KB
• Volume: 78
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0146-6615
• DOI: 10.1002/jmv.20511

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

To determine the cell populations in peripheral blood that are infected latently with human herpesvirus 7 (HHV‐7), the real‐time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to determine the quantities of viral DNA in adherent and non‐adherent cells from 71 healthy volunteers. Real‐time PCR, which detected the U31 gene of HHV‐7, was developed to measure viral load. The majority of non‐adherent cells (14/16; 87.5%) contained HHV‐7 DNA, while most of the adherent cells did not (1/16; 6.3%). HHV‐7 viral load in non‐adherent cells was significantly higher than that in adherent cells (P < 0.0001). Then, HHV‐7 DNA load was compared between the CD4‐positive and ‐negative cell fractions derived from the non‐adherent cells of 26 healthy adults. As in the previous experiment, only 2 (7.7%) of the 26 adherent cell specimens contained small amounts of HHV‐7 DNA (27.7 copies/1 × 10^6^ cells and 208.7 copies/1 × 10^6^ cells). In contrast, 88.5% of CD4^+^ T cell samples (23/26 specimens) were positive for HHV‐7 DNA, ranging from 0.4 to 3,542.8 copies/1 × 10^6^ cells. Viral DNA was detected in only 3 (11.5%) of the 26 CD4^−^ T cell specimens, with 8.4, 63.5, and 74.1 copies/1 × 10^6^ cells. HHV‐7‐positive DNA loads were significantly higher in the CD4^+^ T cells than those observed in the CD4^−^ T cells (P = 0.0005). The relationship between HHV‐7 viral loads in non‐adherent cells and those in saliva was investigated. Comparison of HHV‐7 DNA load between blood CD4^+^ T cells and saliva revealed that the HHV‐7 DNA load in saliva correlated with that present in CD4^+^ T cells (r = 0.415; P = 0.0174). J. Med. Virol. 78:112–116, 2006. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, inc.