Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2025 Oct:279:110545.
doi: 10.1016/j.clim.2025.110545. Epub 2025 Jun 18.

High activity of human cytomegalovirus in patients with Sjögren's disease

Mattia Russel Pantalone  1 , Xinling Xu  2 , Nerea Martín Almazán  3 , Christina Gerstner  4 , Marie Fischer  4 , Marika Kvarnström  4 , Cecilia Söderberg-Nauclér  5 , Marie Wahren-Herlenius  4 , Afsar Rahbar  6
Affiliations
Free article

High activity of human cytomegalovirus in patients with Sjögren's disease

Mattia Russel Pantalone et al. Clin Immunol. 2025 Oct.
Free article

Abstract

Sjögren's disease (SD) is a chronic autoimmune disease characterized by immune-mediated damage to salivary and lacrimal glands. This study aimed to explore the potential link between SD and human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), by analyzing presence of HCMV proteins in salivary gland tissue specimens and prevalence of HCMV-specific antibodies in serum samples from SD patients and controls. HCMV-immediate early (IE) and late proteins (LA and pp65) were highly abundant in tissue specimens from SD patients (88.9 %, 69.2 %, 45.8 %, respectively), and less abundant in patients with Sicca symptoms without SD (70.5 %, 20.0 %, 12.5 %, respectively). Samples in the SD group were also positive at higher scores for the HCMV proteins than Sicca symptom patients without SD. IgM prevalence was higher in SD patients than in healthy controls (32.1 % vs. 13.4 %, P = 0.04) and HCMV-IgG titers were higher (P < 0.0001). Understanding the potential role of HCMV in SD pathogenesis may contribute to advancements in disease prevention and treatment.

Keywords: Autoimmunity; HCMV; Immunohistochemistry; Serology; Sjögren's disease.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Cecilia Soderberg-Naucler reports financial support was provided by The Swedish Medical Research Council. Cecilia Soderberg-Naucler reports financial support was provided by InFLAMES Flagship Program of the Academy of Finland. Marie Wahren-Herlenius reports financial support was provided by The Swedish Medical Research Council. Marie Wahren-Herlenius reports financial support was provided by Swedish Heart and Lung Association. Cecilia Soderberg-Naucler reports a relationship with Immunor AS that includes: equity or stocks. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

MeSH terms