Molecular Detection of Epstein–Barr Virus, Human Herpes Virus 6, with Multiple Sclerosis
Main Article Content
Abstract
Background and Aims: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an immune inflammatory disease, where the underlying etiological cause remains elusive. Multiple triggering factors have been suggested, including environmental, genetic and gender components. However, underlying infectious triggers to the disease are also suspected. There is an increasing abundance of evidence supporting a viral etiology to MS, including the efficacy of interferon therapy and over-detection of viral antibodies and nucleic acids when compared with healthy patients, Furthermore, this study aimed to evaluate the relationship between viral diseases, including Epstein–Barr virus (EBV), human herpes virus and MS in the present case-control study.
Materials and Methods: Patients with MS were recruited from our clinic population, and blood was drawn while they were in clinic for standard clinical care. The study was enrolled-with 60 MS patients (40 female/20 males, rang years of age 10-65), and 50 healthy-looking controls (25 female/25 males, Rang 17-70 years of age). All patients were admitted in Al-Sadder- Medical City in Al-Najaf Province from December up to March 2024.all subjects signed informed consent. five milliliters of blood were collected in EDTA tube, the samples were allowed to stand at room temperature for 15 min and maintained at -20°C in order to viral DNA Extraction using a specific viral DNA extraction kit (Patho Gene-spinTM DNA/RNA Extraction Kit, Intron/Korea); as a preliminary step to amplify the target HHV-6 DNA and EBV-DNA, according to the manufacturer’s instructions in order to use in Real Time PCR.
Results: One hundred and ten cases included in this study (60 out of 110 was diagnosis with MS 21 male and 39 female) with Mean+-SDE age (31.66 ± 11.10) years, ranging from 9 to 63 years, and 50 out of 110 23 males and 27female apparently healthy control while the mean age of healthy controls was 32.42 ± 11.89 years, ranging from 17 to 70 years. The results of RT-PCR amplification revealed that the ratio of positive detection of Human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) 23 (38.3%) out of 60 patients with MS and 6 (12.0%) of healthy control has positive detection of HHV-6, and the difference was significant (P= 0.002) as shown in Table (4). Furthermore, the detection of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) in patients with MS and healthy control show 38 (63.3%) out of 60 patients with MS and 12 (24.0 %) of healthy control have positive detection of EBV, and the difference was significant (P= 0.001).
Conclusion: We detected a significantly higher number of individuals with DNA of EBV and HHV6 in their blood among patient with MS compared with the control group, the results suggest association between the presence of DNA of HHV6, EBV and MS.