Prevalence of JC polyomavirus large T antigen sequences among Iranian patients with central nervous system tumors

Abstract

The human neurotropic JC virus (JCV) is of significant interest due to its experimental neuro- oncogenic potential. In clinical samples from human central nervous system (CNS) tumors, detection of JCV sequences suggests a possible association with CNS neoplasms, but the results are discrepant worldwide. To assess the prevalence of JCV sequences in Iranian patients with primary and metastatic CNS malignancies, a total of 58 fresh CNS tumors were examined by quantitative real-time PCR targeting the JCV large T antigen (LT-Ag) gene, and JCV DNA load was determined as viral copy number per cell. All patients were immunocompetent, and none of them had received immunosuppressive therapy before surgical operation. JC virus LT-Ag sequences were found in a total of 15 (25.9 %) out of the 58 tested samples. In primary CNS tumors, JCV sequences were identified more frequently in meningiomas (50.0 %) and schwannomas (35.7 %). In metastatic CNS tumors, JCV LT-Ag was identified in one case with brain adenocarcinoma originating from lung cancer. No statistically significant association between JCV positivity and various types of CNS malignancies was observed (P = 0.565). The mean JCV LT-Ag copy number in 15 positive cases was 1.8 × 10(-4) ± 4.5 × 10(-4) copies per cell (range 1.0 × 10(-5)-1.78 × 10(-3) copies per cell). An inverse correlation between white blood cell (WBC) count and JCV copy number was observed, but this correlation was not statistically significant (R = -0.198, P = 0.480). This study provides the first data on the prevalence of JCV in primary and metastatic CNS tumors from Iranian patients.

Specific and quantitative detection of Human polyomaviruses BKPyV and JCPyV in the healthy Pakistani population

“…For example, Delbue et al found that age has no significant effect on the molecular prevalence of polyomaviruses [18]. Contrary to that, Sadeghi et al reported that seroprevalence of JCPyV in Australian population increases from 60 to 68% in middle-ages and then decrease to 64% in oldest ages [45]. Although a similar trend was noticed in our study, rate of JCPyV infection in our target population was much lower than the Australian cohort.…”

No Evidence for an Association between JC Polyomavirus Infection and Gastroduodenal Diseases

“…The JCPyV LTag DNA load was determined as the viral DNA copies/RNase P gene copy (a proven single copy gene), which described the copy number/cell. Construction of plasmids containing cloned target sequences of JCPyV LTag and human RNase P gene (quantitative standards for real-time PCR) was described previously [27,28]. Quantitative real-time PCR was conducted using a Rotor-Gene ® Q (Qiagen GmbH, Hilden, Germany) real-time PCR system by the primer sets and TaqMan probe specific for the JCPyV LTag gene and the human RNase P gene according to a previously described procedure [29,30].…”

Detección de polyomavirus BK y JC en extractos leucocitarios de sangre periférica de pacientes con infección por VIH del área norte de Santiago

“…Sólo el año 2014 fue posible encontrar en Medline reportes con cinco protocolos distintos para la detección de estos polyomavirus en muestras clínicas [24][25][26][27][28] . Esto se debe a que existe una importante diversidad de secuencias y no se ha establecido regiones conservadas absolutas.…”