Torque teno virus dynamics during the first year of life

• Published in: Virology journal Vol. 15; no. 1; p. 96
• Main Authors: Tyschik, Elena A, Rasskazova, Anastasiya S, Degtyareva, Anna V, Rebrikov, Denis V, Sukhikh, Gennady T
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England BioMed Central Ltd 30.05.2018; BioMed Central; BMC
• Subjects: Age; Age Factors; Babies; Blood; Breast feeding; Breastfeeding & lactation; Children; Deoxyribonucleic acid; Disease transmission; DNA; DNA Virus Infections - blood; DNA Virus Infections - genetics; DNA Virus Infections - virology; DNA, Viral - genetics; Female; Fetuses; Food contamination & poisoning; Genetic aspects; Hematopoietic stem cells; Humans; Immune response; Immunocompromised hosts; Infant; Infants; Male; Neonatal period; Physiological aspects; Prevalence; Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction; Sensitivity and Specificity; Software; Stem cell transplantation; Stem cells; Torque teno virus; Torque teno virus - physiology; Transfusion-transmitted virus; Transplants & implants; TT virus; TTV; Viral Load; Viral load dynamics; Viruses; Russia; United States > US; Transfusion-transmitted virus; TTV; TORCH infections; Torque teno virus; Viral load dynamics; Infants; Neonatal period
• ISSN: 1743-422X; 1743-422X
• DOI: 10.1186/s12985-018-1007-6

Torque teno virus is a small chronically persisting circular negative ssDNA virus reaching near 100% prevalence. It is reported to be a marker for immune function in immunocompromised patients. The possibility of vertical maternal-fetal transmission remains controversial but incidence rate of TTV DNA in children increased with age. TTV dynamics well studied for allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation as a predictor of post-transplant complications but there is no viral proliferation kinetics data for other patient groups or healthy individuals. The aim of this study was to determine TTV dynamics during the first year of life of healthy infants. Ninety eight clinically healthy breastfeeding infants (1-12 months of age) were analyzed by quantitative PCR for the whole blood TTV load with the test sensitivity of about 1000 viral copies per milliliter of blood (total number of samples including repeatedly tested infants was 109). 67% of all analyzed samples were TTV-positive demonstrating significant positive correlation between age and TTV load (r = 0.81, p < 0.01). This is the first study to suggest that viral load increases during the first year of life reaching a plateau after 6 months with strong proliferation for the first 60 days. Our data well correlates with TTV dynamics in patients following allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.