Human parvovirus PARV4 DNA in tissues from adult individuals: a comparison with human parvovirus B19 (B19V)

Fabiana Corcioli,Simonetta Di Lollo,Massimo Innocenti,Alberta Azzi,Rosa Fanci,Vincenzo De Giorgi,Matteo Rotellini,Krystyna Zakrzewska

doi:10.1186/1743-422x-7-272

Abstract

BackgroundPARV4 is a new member of the Parvoviridae family not closely related to any of the known human parvoviruses. Viremia seems to be a hallmark of PARV4 infection and viral DNA persistence has been demonstrated in a few tissues. Till now, PARV4 has not been associated with any disease and its prevalence in human population has not been clearly established. This study was aimed to assess the tissue distribution and the ability to persist of PARV4 in comparison to parvovirus B19 (B19V).ResultsPARV4 and B19V DNA detection was carried out in various tissues of individuals without suspect of acute viral infection, by a real time PCR and a nested PCR, targeting the ORF2 and the ORF1 respectively. Low amount of PARV4 DNA was found frequently (>40%) in heart and liver of adults individuals, less frequently in lungs and kidneys (23,5 and 18% respectively) and was rare in bone marrow, skin and synovium samples (5,5%, 4% and 5%, respectively). By comparison, B19V DNA sequences were present in the same tissues with a higher frequency (significantly higher in myocardium, skin and bone marrow) except than in liver where the frequency was the same of PARV4 DNA and in plasma samples where B19V frequency was significantly lower than that of PARV4ConclusionsThe particular tropism of PARV4 for liver and heart, here emerged, suggests to focus further studies on these tissues as possible target for viral replication and on the possible role of PARV4 infection in liver and heart diseases. Neither bone marrow nor kidney seem to be a common target of viral replication.

Highlights

PARV4 is a new member of the Parvoviridae family not closely related to any of the known human parvoviruses
With the aim to assess the tissue distribution and the ability to persist of PARV4 in comparison to B19V, we searched for DNA sequences of both parvoviruses in various tissues of individuals without suspect of acute viral infection
The frequency of PARV4 DNA finding was low in skin, synovium and bone marrow (45,5%) whereas in myocardium samples PARV4 sequences were shown in 17 out of 35 (49%), a frequency significantly higher than in the other tissues examined but significantly lower than that of B19V

Summary

Introduction

PARV4 is a new member of the Parvoviridae family not closely related to any of the known human parvoviruses. PARV4 is a member of the Parvoviridae family discovered in 2005 in plasma from an intravenous drug user, with symptoms consistent with acute HIV infection, but confirmed to be HIV RNA negative [1]. It seemed to be not closely related to any of the known human or animal parvoviruses until 2008 when novel porcine and bovine parvoviruses highly similar to PARV4 were identified so that it was proposed the inclusion of PARV4 in a new genus Hokovirus [2]. Three genotypes of PARV4 have been identified at present [3,4] Till it has not been associated with any disease and its spread in the human population has not been clearly assessed. The aim of this study was to assess whether PARV4 is able to persist in different tissues, like B19V, or if it shows a particular tissue tropism

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