Detection of Quebec Polyomavirus DNA in Samples from Different Patient Groups

Abstract

Polyomaviruses infect many species, including humans. So far, 15 polyomaviruses have been described in humans, but it remains to be established whether all of these are genuine human polyomaviruses. The most recent polyomavirus to be detected in a person is Quebec polyomavirus (QPyV), which was identified in a metagenomic analysis of a stool sample from an 85-year-old hospitalized man. We used PCR to investigate the presence of QPyV DNA in urine samples from systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients (67 patients; 135 samples), multiple sclerosis patients (n = 35), HIV-positive patients (n = 66) and pregnant women (n = 65). Moreover, cerebrospinal fluid from patients with suspected neurological diseases (n = 63), nasopharyngeal aspirates from patients (n = 80) with respiratory symptoms and plasma samples from HIV-positive patients (n = 65) were examined. QPyV DNA was found in urine from 11 (16.4%), 10 (15.4%) and 5 (14.3%) SLE patients, pregnant women, and multiple sclerosis patients, respectively. No QPyV DNA could be detected in the other samples. Alignment with the only available QPyV sequence in the GenBank revealed amino acid substitutions in the HI-loop of capsid protein VP1 in 6/28 of the isolates. Our results show that QPyV viruria can occur, but whether it may cause clinical symptoms in the patients remains to be determined.

Keywords: HI-loop; HIV; VP1; cerebrospinal fluid; multiple sclerosis; nasopharyngeal aspirates; pregnant women; systemic lupus erythematosus; urine.

Figure 1

Mutations found in QPyV VP1 sequence amplified from the urine of pregnant women and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients. A green box indicates the presence of the mutation. The numbering of the nucleotides is according to the reference QPyV strain (GenBank accession number BK010702). The complete VP1 nucleotide sequence and the region sequenced in this study are shown in Figure S1.

Figure 2

Amino acid sequence alignment of the QPyV VP1 fragment (residues 221−304). The published sequence (BK010702) is given at the top. A hyphen indicates an identical amino acid. The sequence corresponding to the HI-loop in HPyV6 and HPyV7 VP1 is underlined. Isolates with silent mutations are not shown.