Novel Parvovirus and Related Variant in Human Plasma

Abstract

We report a novel parvovirus (PARV4) and related variants in pooled human plasma used in the manufacture of plasma-derived medical products. Viral DNA was detected by using highly selective polymerase chain reaction assays; 5% of pools tested positive, and amounts of DNA ranged from <500 copies/mL to >106 copies/mL plasma.

Frequency of human parvovirus 4 (PARV4) viremia among HBV-infected patients and healthy donors in Shiraz, Iran

“…So far, the virus has been isolated from many tissues including bone marrow of HIV-positive individuals (13) and the liver of HBVand HCV-infected patients (14,15). Moreover, the virus has been diagnosed in plasma, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), skin, myocardium, and blood products around the world (1,3,7,8,11,(15)(16)(17). Despite the detection of viral nucleic acid in many organs, PARV4 has scarcely been linked to specific symptoms, except for a recent study that was conducted in Africa linking PARV4 to encephalitis (11) and another study in which the virus was diagnosed in people with symptoms including pharyngitis, nausea, and joint pain (1).…”

“…Genotypes II and III were identified in 2006 and 2008, respectively (2,3). The nucleotide difference between genotypes I and II is about 8% in sequenced regions (3,4). Two large nonoverlapping open reading frames, ORF1 and ORF2, organized the genome of PARV4 and encode respectively a nonstructural and a capsid protein (5).…”

A third genotype of the human parvovirus PARV4 in sub-Saharan Africa

“…Its frequent detection in autopsy tissue in these risk groups but a virtual absence of detectable viraemia in the period following primary infection, even in heavily immunosuppressed study subjects with AIDS suggests persistence with highly restricted replication, similar to that of parvovirus B19 (Norja et al, 2006). Two genotypes of PARV4 have been described to date (Fryer et al, 2006;Manning et al, 2007), differing from each other by approximately 6-9 % in nucleotide sequence (Fryer et al, 2007a). Rather than showing different geographical distributions, analysis of the age distributions of PARV4-infected study subjects revealed a marked transition from predominantly genotype 2 infections among IDUs first parenterally exposed in the 1980s to entirely genotype 1 infections among those infected from the 1990s onwards .…”

“…PARV4 is not closely related to any other parvovirus described to date, and may constitute a new group within the parvovirus family. Detection of PARV4 infections has to date been restricted to pooled plasma or plasma-derived blood products (Fryer et al, 2006(Fryer et al, , 2007b and to autopsy samples of lymphoid tissue, bone marrow or liver from study subjects in the USA and Europe Simmonds et al, 2007;Longhi et al, 2007;Fryer et al, 2007d;Schneider et al, 2008). Compared with other parvoviruses, which are predominantly transmitted through respiratory routes, PARV4 infections show an unusual risk-group association.…”

Human Parvovirus 4 in Kidney Transplant Patients, France

“…The fi rst prevalence studies, performed mainly in North America and the United Kingdom, reported fi nding the virus in plasma samples from febrile patients who had symptoms resembling those of acute HIV infection (6%), from cadavers of hepatitis C RNA-positive intravenous drug users (30%), and in plasma donations from healthy blood donors (5% pooled, 2% individual) (3)(4)(5). PARV4 was also identifi ed in clotting factor VIII concentrate and in plasma pools negative for parvovirus B19 DNA (5,6).…”