Clinical application of real-time polymerase chain reaction for diagnosis of herpetic diseases of the anterior segment of the eye

Abstract

Real-time PCR is an informative method of diagnosing herpetic eye diseases and evaluating the possible involvement of HSV in other inflammatory ocular diseases.

Unusual clinical presentations of new‐onset herpetic eye disease after ocular surgery

“…In all the cases described in our study, a real-time PCR assay was used. The use of PCR for the diagnosis of HSV is claimed to be equally specific and possibly more sensitive than the cell cultures (Kakimaru-Hasegawa et al 2008;Espy et al 2000). PCR-based techniques have been successfully employed on various clinical samples including tear film, corneal epithelium and corneal buttons.…”

Relationship between the number of cytomegalovirus in anterior chamber and severity of anterior segment inflammation

“…Cases with infections of herpes simplex virus or varicella zoster virus as determined by real-time PCR of the aqueous humor samples were excluded [4]. In addition, systemic examinations were performed to determine if systemic inflammatory disorders, infectious diseases, or neoplastic diseases were the cause of the diseases.…”

“…The aqueous humor was collected by paracentesis, and DNA was extracted from the aqueous humor with the QIAamp DNA mini kit (Qiagen, Hilden, Germany) [4]. The glycoprotein B gene of CMV was amplified with the LightCycler (Roche, Basel, Switzerland) as described [15].…”

“…Recent studies show that infections by the herpes family of viruses, including herpes simplex virus, varicella-zoster virus and human cytomegalovirus (CMV), are important causes of corneal endotheliitis [4][5][6]. Of these, the ubiquitous lymphotropic herpes virus, CMV, has been shown to be the causative agent of the rare vision-threatening CMV retinitis found in immuno-compromised hosts [7].…”

Induction of IL-6 in Transcriptional Networks in Corneal Epithelial Cells after Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1 Infection

“…4A) and found that a significantly lower level of VEGF was secreted from the infected HCECs. To determine whether the reduced VEGF level was due to a blockage of virus replication, we used real-time PCR 19 and a plaque assay to quantify the HSV-1 genome. Replication of the HSV-1 genome was not significantly affected by IL-6 blockade (cells control treated at MOI 0.1 yielded 9.2 Ϯ 0.9 ϫ 10 3 copies/L and anti-IL-6-treated at MOI 0.1 yielded 1.0 Ϯ 0.2 ϫ 10 4 copies/L, P Ͼ 0.05).…”