INTERSTRAIN VARIATION OF IMMEDIATE-EARLY DNA-SEQUENCES AND GLYCOPROTEIN-B GENOTYPES IN CYTOMEGALOVIRUS CLINICAL ISOLATES

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) disease is associated with a high mortality in r ecipients of an allogeneic stem cell transplant. Apparent differences in biological behaviour have been noted among clinical CMV isolates. B y amplifying specific functionally relevant regions of the CMV genome [immediate early (IE) exon 3, glycoprotein B (gB)], a possible associa tion of strain variation and clinical symptoms of infection was analys ed in 24 patients. A high number of genome mutations of the IE exon 3 region could be documented translating into amino acid changes of vira l isolated of 8 out of 15 patients with symptomatic and 2 out of 9 pat ients with asymptomatic CMV infection. Identical IE mutations and gB t ypes were observed in isolates from two different sites in 6 patients. gB strain 2 was found to be associated with symptomatic CMV infection (P=0.03). Thus, apart from host factors viral factors might influence the virus-host interaction in severely immunosuppressed patients.