Measurement And Analysis Of Human Parvovirus In Blood Samples: The High Risk Of Human Parvovirus Infection In Patients With Malignant Tumors

In 1975, human parvovirus B19(B19) was first discovered by Cossart in England in serum of a healthy blood donor. After that, Sweden scientist Allander detected a new parvovirus from nasopharyngeal aspirates of children with lower respiratoty infection in October of 2005. They are the only two parvo viruses known to be pathogenic for humans with a worldwide distribution. Parvovirus B19 infection has been implicated in a wide range of clinical manifestations, the outcome of which depends heavily on the physiologic status of the individual and the immune response against the virus. An increased parvovirus B19 infection rate has been observed in immunocompromised hosts. However, little literature on B19 involvement in malignant tumours is available.To evaluate whether parvovirus B19, a common human pathogen, was also involved in malignant tumors,288 serum samples of cancer patients collected from The Second Hospital of Wuhan Iron and Steel Company (WISCO) were examined for B19 DNA by nested PCR. The overall prevalence of B19 DNA in adult cancer patients with 50.69% (146/288) was significantly higher than that of the healthy controls with 4.5%(36/800) (χ2 test, P< 0.0001). We collected 156 patients' pertinent clinicopathologic features, and further examined the seropositivity rate of human bocavirus(HBoV), hepatitis B virus (HBV) and transfusion transmitted virus(TTV) in their serum. The prevalence percentage of HBoV infection in adult cancer patients was 39.74%(62/156) ranked in the second place of the analysis, while the infection prevalence of HBV and TTV were 5.13%(8/156) and 6.41%(10/156), respectively (P< 0.0001).Our data suggest that adult cancer patients may have a significantly increased risk of B19 infection. These findings showed that B19 and HBoV DNA commonly exists in cancer patients' serum and there is a possible novel link between parvovirus infection and malignant tumors. However, further works are required to indentify whether parvovirus infection is one of the causing agents of cancer. This is the first report suggesting that human parvovirus infection probably poses a significant problem in cancer patients. Since B19 infection usually presents with nonspecific symptoms and signs and is easily overlooked, a high degree of suspicion and a careful search for clinical evidence of infection are needed.