Human cytomegalovirus glycoprotein B genotypes in blood of AIDS patients: Lack of association with either the viral DNA load in leukocytes or presence of retinitis

Abstract

It has been suggested that human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) glycoprotein B (gB) genotypes could be used as a marker for viral virulence in patients with AIDS. The present study was designed to evaluate a possible association between specific gB genotypes, the presence of HCMV retinitis, and the HCMV viral load. Fifty-four blood samples were obtained from 54 HIV- and HCMV-infected patients. Twenty-seven of these patients were asymptomatic for HCMV, whereas the other 27 patients had been diagnosed recently with HCMV retinitis. HCMV gB genotyping was carried out by using restriction enzyme analysis of PCR-amplified PMNL extracts. Determination of the HCMV viral load in the same specimens was carried out using a quantitative-PCR. HCMV gB genotype 2 was found more frequently than other genotypes in PCR-amplified polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNL) of patients with AIDS (P < 0.05) but not more frequently in samples from patients with HCMV retinitis. No significant association was found between any HCMV gB genotypes and the viral load in blood. In conclusion, the actual HCMV gB genotyping system using PMNL provides no additional benefit over the viral load in blood for identification of HIV-infected subjects at risk of HCMV disease.

Differentiation of Human Cytomegalovirus Genotypes in Immunocompromised Patients on the Basis of UL4 Gene Polymorphisms

“…For this to occur, a single cell within a single patient presumably must become infected with у2 different CMV strains. Our detection of 11 UL4 type in 50% of this set of patients is consistent with multiple previous studies showing that AIDS patients are often infected by multiple CMV strains [3,20,22,[51][52][53]. Furthermore, we detected 2 virus types in single tissue samples from 1 patient, which illustrates that the conditions needed for recombination may well exist in AIDS patients.…”

Clinical correlations of human cytomegalovirus strains and viral load in kidney transplant recipients

“…Several studies have shown that AIDS patients shed gB2 strains more frequently [29] while transplant recipients and children with congenital infection shed gB1 [27,30]. As in our study, gB3 and gB4 groups were shown to be less frequently found or absent, while gB3 was also considered rare in this population.…”

Evaluation of glycoprotein B genotypes and load of CMV infecting blood leukocytes on prognosis of AIDS patients

“…In a previous study, GILBERT et al 11 observed a similar predominance of gB2 genotype patients with low CD4 -cell counts in AIDS patients with and without CMV retinitis, indicating no association between genotype and disease. DREW et al, in 2002, found that half of AIDS patients had gB2 genotype and that this genotype is not a major determinant of retinitis pathogenicity but appears to be highly prevalent among HIV-infected patients 9 .…”