Investigating the prevalence of parvovirus B19 in thalassemia patients referred to Sari Thalassemia Research Center in 2014

Abstract

Background and Aim: Human parvovirus B19 is associated with a variety of clinical manifestations, including infectious erythema, transient aplastic crisis, fetal hydrops, vasculitis, and acute arthropathy.  Given the high prevalence of this virus in clinical samples isolated from different patients, especially patients who receive continuous blood, such as thalassemia patients, as well as various studies that have been conducted on this virus, and since parvovirus B19 is highly pathogenic and is transmitted to the fetus and mother through respiration, blood and blood products, the present study was conducted to search for the genome of human parvovirus B19 and to evaluate its frequency in thalassemia and dialysis patients.

Materials and Methods: A total number of 212 patients were selected in two groups (n=106) and serums were collected after DNA collection and extraction using polymerase chain reaction and Nested - PCR method to examine the presence of parvovirus B19 genome.

Results: Parvovirus B19 nucleotide sequence was observed in 41 samples (38.6%) of thalassemia patients and 32 samples (30.1%) of dialysis patients, which according to the statistical test, this difference was not significant in the two groups (P value = 0.24).

Conclusion: The results of present study showed that there is no statistically significant difference between the frequencies of human parvovirus B19 in thalassemia patients. Due to high prevalence of the virus in each of these two groups, it is recommended more studies be performed with larger populations. It is also recommended various cases, including pathogenicity and the effect of this virus on accelerating and severity of thalassemia and epidemiology and genotype of this virus, be investigated in future studies.