Prevalence of Human Herpes Virus 6 (HHV-6) in Patients with Hemodialysis

Copyright: © 2015 Tarhan G et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. HHV-6 is the causative agent of exanthema subitum in children. The main modes of transmission of HHV-6 are body secretions such as infected saliva but it can be transmitted with blood and blood products that are infected with the virus. Therefore, it is thought that the immunocompromised hemodialysis patients who had multiple blood transfusions due to various reasons, and who collectively use devices such as hemodialysis machines are at risk for HHV-6 infection. The present study aimed to determine the incidence of HHV-6 infection in hemodialysis patients. Twenty-five healthy individuals that were matched with 25 hemodialysis patients in terms of gender and age were included in the study. The IgM and IgG sero-prevalence in the patient and control groups were investigated with the indirect fluorescence antibody method and HHV-6 DNA prevalence and the determination of variant types (variant A and variant B) were investigated with the PCR-RFLP molecular method. HHV-6 IgG and HHV-6 IgM antibody positivity ratios in the patient and control groups were 76 % and 20 % respectively. Out of 50 serum samples o