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  • Title: Quantitation of Human herpes virus 6 genome in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
    Author: Seror E, Coquerel B, Gautheret-Dejean A, Ballerini P, Landman-Parker J, Leverger G, Schneider P, Vannier JP.
    Journal: J Med Virol; 2008 Apr; 80(4):689-93. PubMed ID: 18297709.
    Abstract:
    Acute lymphoblastic leukemia is the main type of leukemia in children. An infectious etiology has been suspected and the role of the Human herpesvirus-6 (HHV-6) has been suggested. Several studies have tried to establish a link between HHV-6 infections and hematological malignancies, with discordant results. The potential role of HHV-6 in the pathogenesis of pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia was investigated. HHV-6 genome copy number was measured by quantitative real-time PCR (RQ-PCR) in bone marrow or peripheral blood samples obtained from 36 children (median age = 4 years) with B acute lymphoblastic leukemia (n = 31) and T acute lymphoblastic leukemia (n = 5) at diagnosis and during complete remission. Positive samples were further characterized to define viral variant, A or B. A total of 24.7% of samples were positive for HHV-6 genome: 13.9% were leukemia samples and 34.1% were complete remission samples. Viral load was low with values lower at diagnosis (median viral copy number = 22.9) than at complete remission (median copy number = 60.1). Among the 17 patients with positive samples, 15 were typed as B-variant whereas 2 could not be typed. These results argue against a role of HHV6 infection in the development of pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia. They also suggest that HHV-6 may infect latently bone marrow progenitors but seems not able to infect leukemic cells, raising again the question of the mechanism of virus fusion and entry. This observation shows that a reactivation may be observed during complete remission supporting the possibility of virus reactivation in immunocompromised hosts.
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