F. Baldanti et al., COINFECTION OF THE IMMUNOCOMPROMISED BUT NOT THE IMMUNOCOMPETENT HOSTBY MULTIPLE HUMAN CYTOMEGALOVIRUS STRAINS, Archives of virology, 143(9), 1998, pp. 1701-1709
Coinfection by multiple human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) strains was inves
tigated in immunocompetent individuals and AIDS patients. Thirty HCMV
maternal and fetal or newborn isolate pairs from 9 cases of congenital
HCMV infection as well as 36 HCMV isolates and 2 PCR-HCMV-positive CS
F samples from 13 AIDS patients were tested by restriction fragment le
ngth polymorphism analysis of multiple genome regions. Results from th
e group of congenital infections showed that: i) all the 9 women with
primary HCMV infection presumably harboured a single HCMV strain; ii)
all strains were genetically unrelated; iii) isolates from infected fe
tuses or newborns consisted of a single strain apparently indistinguis
hable from the maternal strain; iv) no strain variations were observed
in isolates from different body sites or in sequential isolates from
newborns up to 8 months after birth. Results from the AIDS patient gro
up demonstrated that; i) all patients were infected by unrelated strai
ns; ii) 6/13 (46.1%) patients were coinfected by 2 or more HCMV strain
s; iii) in a single patient two different HCMV strains were detected i
n blood and urine, respectively, whereas a mixture of the two was foun
d in the pharynx; iv) 4 patients showed the sequential appearance of a
mixed virus population or different strains suggesting sequential rei
nfections.