Investigation of HHV-8 infection in HIV infected people in Istanbul, Turkey

Abstract

The most common neoplasm in AIDS patients is Kaposi's sarcoma (KS). Human herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8) is found to be responsible from KS. It is intended to investigate this newly identified virus in 50 HIV infected patients and 49 blood donors. For this purpose HHV-8 DNA was investigated in peripheral blood mononuclear cells by nested PCR with P1/P2 primers as the outher pair and P3/P4 sequences as the inner. pair. The predicted amplified, band was 233 basepairs. HHV-8 IgG antibodies was detected by IFA using Biotrin HHV-8 IgG IFA (Ireland).HHV-8 DNA was only detected in one HIV infected patient with KS. All blood donors were negative for HHV-8 DNA. HHV-8 IgG antibodies were found to be positive in 4 % and 21 % of blood donors and HIV seropositives, respectively.