Hepatitis C Virus and Human Herpesvirus 8: Immunological Response, Modification of Cell Metabolism, and Association With Type 2 Diabetes

Human Herpesvirus 8 and Host-Cell Interaction: Long-Lasting Physiological Modifications, Inflammation and Related Chronic Diseases

“…Furthermore, they described a HHV8 genotype with relevant genomic differences in the orf26 and K1 genes (referred to as a "new-type"), when the isolated virus from DMT2 patients was compared to that from healthy volunteers and wild-type virus strains. Moreover, it has been reported that classic KS is more frequent in diabetics than in the normal population [84], raising the question as to whether diabetes facilitates KS or, conversely, whether HHV8 may be a risk factor for DMT2 [63,65,69,85,86]. Furthermore, Caselli et al [75] reported a high prevalence of HHV8 specific killer-cell immunoglobulin-like receptor (KIR) allotypes in DMT2 patients.…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, to date, only HCV and HHV8 viruses have been associated to DMT2 on a biological and epidemiological basis [25,60,61,65,76,78,79,82,87,88]. In particular, HCV has been reported as causing diabetes by its direct action on liver metabolism and also by the activation of a specific immune response that may cause tissue damage, whereas a strong epidemiological association with HHV8 has been described in the last decade [65,75,78,81,82,86]. In a recent paper, Lontchi-Yimagou et al [89] studied insulin secretion in HHV8-positive and -negative sub-Saharan African subjects with DMT2.…”

“…On the basis of these considerations, some authors have hypothesized a possible association between chronic HHV8 infection and the onset of chronic diseases such as diabetes. The recent studies performed in the Mediterranean and sub-Saharan Regions have given significant evidence of an epidemiological association between HHV8 infection and DMT2 [77,78,86,89]. Furthermore, the upset of both the glucose and lipid metabolism of endothelial cells has been hypothesized as creating the conditions that favour the metabolic syndrome and decrease in insulin efficiency found in diabetes (Figure 1).…”