A 12-year molecular survey of clinical herpes simplex virus type 2 isolates demonstrates the circulation of clade A and B strains in Germany
Section snippets
Background
Herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2, Human Herpesvirus 2) is a human representative of the subfamily Alphaherpesvirinae within the family Herpesviridae. After primary infection HSV-2 typically establishes latency in the sacral ganglia. HSV-2 reactivation from latency is the main cause of genital herpes worldwide and responsible for an increased risk of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) acquisition in HIV-negative individuals.8 The HSV-2 genome is a 155 kb linear, double-stranded DNA molecule and
Objective
In contrast to the large number of seroepidemiological studies performed in Central Europe, no molecular epidemiological study on HSV-2 has been performed so far in Central Europe and in Germany in particular. Therefore, the objectives of our study in Germany were (i) to type the circulating HSV-2 wild-type strains by a novel approach and (ii) to monitor potential changes in the molecular epidemiology between 1997 and 2008.
Study design
Swabs were obtained between 1997 and 2008 from 64 herpes patients that were referred to the Hospital of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Virus isolation was performed in Vero cells (ATCC CRL-1587, Rockville, MD) using the shell vial assay and subsequent staining with HSV-2-specific monoclonal antibodies (Argene/Biosoft, Varilhes, France) as described recently.3 If several isolates were available from a single patient only the first isolate was included in the
Results and discussion
The gB coding DNA sequence of HSV-2 was chosen as a novel target because it is one of the most highly conserved genes within the family Herpesviridae and previously successfully used for reliable phylogenetic analysis of novel reptilian and mammalian herpesviruses.5, 15 Based on the phylogenetic analysis of the gB coding DNA sequence by fast maximum-likelihood (ML) inference7 and Neighbor-net,10 8 of 64 (12%) isolates were classified as clade A strains and 56 of 64 (88%) isolates were
Conflict of interest
The authors do not have commercial or other associations that might pose a conflict of interest (e.g., pharmaceutical stock ownership or consultancy).
Acknowledgment
The work was supported by the Hospital of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University.
References (20)
- et al.
Genital herpes
Lancet
(2007) - et al.
Possible emergence of new geminiviruses by frequent recombination
Virology
(1999) - et al.
A 10-year molecular survey of herpes simplex virus type 1 in Germany demonstrates a stable and high prevalence of genotypes A and B
J Clin Virol
(2009) - et al.
An exact nonparametric method for inferring mosaic structure in sequence triplets
Genetics
(2007) - et al.
A simple and robust statistical test for detecting the presence of recombination
Genetics
(2006) - et al.
Epidemiology of herpes simplex virus types 1 and 2 in Germany: what has changed?
Med Microbiol Immunol
(2003) - et al.
The genome sequence of herpes simplex virus type 2
J Virol
(1998) - et al.
Identification of novel rodent herpesviruses, including the first gammaherpesvirus of Mus musculus
J Virol
(2007) - et al.
Sister-Scanning: a Monte Carlo procedure for assessing signals in recombinant sequences
Bioinformatics
(2000) - et al.
A simple, fast, and accurate algorithm to estimate large phylogenies by maximum likelihood
Syst Biol
(2003)
Cited by (7)
Phylogenetic studies of frequently diagnostically sampled herpesviruses - Possibilities for clinical applications?
2013, Infection, Genetics and EvolutionCitation Excerpt :Rebound infection/reactivation and drug resistance can also be seen with HSV-2. Various population level phylogenetic surveys have been performed on HSV-1 and HSV-2 mainly for genogrouping/genotyping purposes (Kolb et al., 2011; Norberg et al., 2004, 2007; Schmidt-Chanasit et al., 2009, 2010), but there have been few if any studies examining intra-host evolution of these viruses within immunocompromised hosts. One of the reasons for this is that routine surveillance sampling is not performed routinely for HSV-1 or HSV-2 in immunocompromised patients, as acyclovir prophylaxis is quite successful in controlling this problem in most cases.
Detection of a new variant of herpes simplex virus type 2 among HIV-1-infected individuals
2013, Journal of Clinical VirologyNovel variants of human herpesvirus 2 from Brazilian hiv-1 coinfected subjects
2018, Memorias do Instituto Oswaldo CruzImpact of HIV-1 infection on herpes simplex virus type 2 genetic variability among co-infected individuals
2015, Journal of Medical VirologyGlobal diversity within and between human herpesvirus 1 and 2 glycoproteins
2015, Journal of VirologyVaccination against infectious diseases: What is promising?
2014, Medical Microbiology and Immunology