Prevalence of human herpesvirus-6 in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients in correlation with cytomegalovirus infection / 中国实验血液学杂志

ABSTRACT

In order to study the prevalence of human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (allo-HSCT) recipients in China and to analyze the relationship between HHV-6 and cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection in post-HSCT patients, nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to monitor HHV-6 DNAemia in 72 consecutive allo-HSCT recipients. 680 EDTA anticoagulated peripheral blood specimens were gathered before HSCT or weekly until 12 weeks after allo-HSCT. The variants of HHV-6 were identified by Hind III restriction analysis. CMV-pp65 antigenemia was detected by immunofluorescence stain. The results showed that HHV-6 DNAemia was detected at least once in 62.5% (45/72) of the patients on the median day 14 (range, 7 - 63 days) after allo-HSCT, and HHV-6B was the predominant variant. CMV antigenemia was detected at least once in 65.3% (47/72) of the patients on the median day 43 (range, 14 - 105 days) after allo-HSCT. Co-infection of HHV-6 and CMV (HHV-6+/CMV+) occurred in 52.8% (38/72) recipients. The onset of HHV-6 DNAemia was earlier than that of CMV antigenemia (P < 0.0001). Patients with HHV-6 DNAemia positive were more likely to have concurrent CMV antigenemia than HHV-6 DNAemia negative patients (84.4% vs 33.3%, P = 0.0001) after allo-HSCT. Among the herpesvirus related disease, the relatively high incidence of hemorrhage cystitis (HC) occurred in 23.6% (17/72) of post-HSCT patients. 88.2% (15/17) of HC developed in HHV-6 positive patients, and 82.3% (14/17) occurred in CMV+/HHV-6+ patients. It is concluded that infection of HHV-6, co-infection of HHV-6 and CMV, commonly occurred in post-HSCT patients in China, HHV-6 infection closely related to CMV antigenemia.