First report of human parvovirus 4 detection in Iran

Abstract

Parvovirus 4 (PARV4) is an emerging and intriguing virus that currently received many attentions. High prevalence of PARV4 infection in high-risk groups such as HIV infected patients highlights the potential clinical outcomes that this virus might have. Molecular techniques were used to determine both the presence and the genotype of circulating PARV4 on previously collected serum samples from 133 HIV infected patients and 120 healthy blood donors. Nested PCR was applied to assess the presence of PARV4 DNA genome in both groups. PARV4 DNA was detected in 35.3% of HIV infected patients compared to 16.6% healthy donors. To genetically characterize the PARV4 genotype in these groups, positive samples were randomly selected and subjected for sequencing and phylogenetic analysis. All PARV4 sequences were found to be genotype 1 and clustered with the reference sequences of PARV4 genotype 1. J. Med. Virol. 88:1314-1318, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Human parvovirus 4 ‘PARV4’ remains elusive despite a decade of study

“…The most substantial updates to the PARV4 literature are studies to determine the prevalence of infection in geographic areas that had not previously been represented. This includes new studies in Scandinavia 17 , 18 , the Middle East 19 , and South America 20 , 21 ; we have summarised these data in Table 2 . Below, we discuss these findings with further reference to their applicability to understanding risk factors for infection.…”

“…Based on the strong relationship between PARV4 and HIV, HBV, and HCV co-infection in North American and European populations, several studies have compared PARV4 exposure (screening for PARV4 IgG or DNA or both) in HIV-positive and HIV-negative groups in different settings. In Iran, HIV infection (with or without HCV co-infection) was reported to be associated with a high prevalence of PARV4 viraemia (35%) 19 . However, in this study, the background prevalence of viraemia in healthy blood donors was also high at 17% 19 .…”

“…In Iran, HIV infection (with or without HCV co-infection) was reported to be associated with a high prevalence of PARV4 viraemia (35%) 19 . However, in this study, the background prevalence of viraemia in healthy blood donors was also high at 17% 19 . Higher seroprevalence was also reported in Scandinavian subjects in the setting of HIV infection; the PARV4 IgG detection frequency was 8% among HIV-positive children 17 , while the background population seropositivity rate was less than 1% in adults and absent in children 18 , 22 .…”

“…Sequencing of PARV4-positive plasma pools and blood products concentrates from various collection years 28 , 29 as well as analysis of the age distributions of PARV4-infected study subjects 26 suggests that genotype-1 replaced genotype-2 as the predominantly acquired genotype in these regions from the mid-1990s onwards, analogous to the genotype replacement that has been described for another parvovirus, B19V 30 . PARV4 sequences derived from a recent study in Iran also all grouped as genotype-1 19 .…”

PARV4 found in wild chimpanzee faeces: an alternate route of transmission?

“…Since first human PARV-4 description in 2005, the epidemiology data are growing and were recently reviewed by Matthews et al [2]. Human PARV4 G1 and G2 are predominant in Europe, North America and Middle East [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10], and are most often described in patients with a history of parenteral drugs application suffering from HIV, HCV or HBV infections [10,11]. Genotype 2 is also reported from Asia [6,12].…”