A study on correlation with HHV-6 infection and Multiple Sclerosis in
Khuzestan, Southwest of Iran
Abstract
Introduction; MS is an inflammatory progressive disease with
destruction of myelin sheath of neurons and axons. Among environmental
risk factors HHV-6 might plays a role in MS. HHV-6 is a lymphotropic
virus causing neurological symptoms. HHV-6 may exist in the PBMCs and
CNS in a latent state. Materials and Methods; This case-control
study was conducted on 116 new cases of MS whom naive to MS drugs. The
control group consist 116 non-MS individuals whose gender, age and their
place of residency were matched with the cases. Ten ml of peripheral
blood was collected from each participant, their Sera and PBMCs were
separated and the DNA was extracted from them separately. After
Nested-PCR, the PCR products were sequenced. Statistical analysis of
data was performed by V.22 of SPSS software and chi-square and Fisher’s
exact tests and Odd‘s ratio were used. The P≤0.05 was considered as
statistically significant. Results; considering of existence of
HHV-6, there was a significant difference in PBMCs and Sera of case and
control group, but among male participants the difference between cases
and controls was not significant while this figure for female
participants was significant in PBMCs and Sera. Regarding age group,
only 21-25 and 31-35 groups were statistically significant. All positive
samples were variant 6B of HHV-6. Discussion; HHV-6 can be
considered as a MS risk factor mainly in female cases, especially in the
age group of 20-35. HHV-6 is in its active state (Sera) in these
patients.