title: Quantitation of Human herpes virus 6 genome in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
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.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de recherche MERCI, Faculté de Médecine et Pharmacie de Rouen, France. seror.je@laposte.net
authors.forename: Elisa
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Seror
authors.forename: Bérénice
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Coquerel
authors.forename: Agnès
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gautheret-Dejean
authors.forename: Paola
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ballerini
authors.forename: Judith
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Landman-Parker
authors.forename: Guy
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Leverger
authors.forename: Pascale
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Schneider
authors.forename: Jean-Pierre
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Vannier
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001769:Blood / Q000821:virology; D001853:Bone Marrow / Q000821:virology; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004279:DNA, Viral / Q000032:analysis*; D005260:Female; D015654:Herpesvirus 6, Human / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction / Q000379:methods; D015452:Precursor B-Cell Lymphoblastic Leukemia-Lymphoma / Q000821:virology*; D054218:Precursor T-Cell Lymphoblastic Leukemia-Lymphoma / Q000821:virology*; D019349:Roseolovirus Infections / Q000150:complications* / Q000821:virology*; D019562:Viral Load
chemical_list: D004279:DNA, Viral