ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Familial case of inherited human herpesvirus 6A with phylogenetic assessment
1 Pediatric Research and Clinical Center of Infectious Diseases of the Federal Medical Biological Agency, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2 Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, Russia
3 Ott Research Institute of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Saint Petersburg, Russia
4 ITMO University, Saint Petersburg, Russia
5 Pavlov First Saint Petersburg State Medical University, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Correspondence should be addressed: Olga V. Goleva
Professor Popov, 9, Saint Petersburg, 197022, Russia;
Author contribution: Goleva OV, Babachenko IV, Tian NS — study planning, data acquisition, analysis and interpretation, manuscript draft; Danilov LG — bioinformatics analysis, search for analytical papers; Kusakin AV — study planning, literature review, data acquisition, analysis and interpretation, bioinformatics analysis, constructing a phylogenetic tree, manuscript draft; Eismont YuA, Chukhlovin AB — study planning, data acquisition, analysis and interpretation; Krylov AV — data acquisition, analysis and interpretation; Glotov OS — research supervision, data analysis and interpretation, manuscript draft.
Compliance with ethical standards: the study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Pediatric Research and Clinical Center for Infectious Diseases of FMBA of Russia (protocol № 107 dated November 27, 2018) and conducted in accordance with the latest edition of the Declaration of Helsinki. Patients and their legal representatives submitted the informed consent to the study participation.
The paper reports a familial case of HHV-6A chromosomal integration being an important and relevant issue of genetics and medicine. The study was aimed to test the hypothesis of HHV-6A chromosomal integration and vertical transmission in patient with persistent virus detection during recurrent respiratory diseases and the asymptomatic period when there were no health complaints. Sequencing of the patient’s father genome DNA was performed, and a phylogenetic tree was constructed by aligning 270 HHV-6A/B genome assemblies from the GenBank database. As a result, a familial case of ciHHV-6A transmission was identified. It was found that the detected ciHHV-6A observed on the phylogenetic tree was closely related to other two chromosomally integrated HHV-6A sequences reported by Moscow researchers. The study confirmed HHV-6A chromosomal integration. Further precise chromosome mapping of ciHHV-6A would be useful in terms of excluding probable somatic disorders associated with the chromosome structure alteration following HHV-6, particularly HHV-6A, integration, as well as for identification of insertion sites specific for various geographic locations.
Keywords: phylogenetics, human herpesvirus 6A/B (HHV-6A/B), chromosomal integration, ciHHV-6A/B, inherited herpesvirus