Cycling probe-based real-time PCR for the detection of Human herpesvirus 6A and B

Human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) is classified as two distinct species: HHV-6A and B. HHV-6B infection can cause several clinical manifestations in transplant recipients including encephalitis, bone marrow suppression, and pneumonitis. In contrast to HHV-6B, the clinical features of HHV-6A infection remain largely undefined. Herein, we developed a multiplex cycling probe real-time PCR that discriminated between HHV-6A and HHV-6B. The assay was HHV-6-specific and no cross amplification was demonstrated for other herpesviruses. Moreover, the assay had a broad, linear dynamic range of detection between 1 and 10⁶ copies of viral DNA. The quantification of HHV-6A DNA was suppressed by an excess amount of HHV-6B DNA (1 × 10⁶ copies/tube) in the multiplex PCR assay; however, 1 × 10⁶ copies/tube of HHV-6A DNA did not affect the quantification of 1 × 10⁴ copies/tube of HHV-6B DNA. To determine the reliability of the assay for analysis of clinical specimens, DNAs extracted from the peripheral blood of hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients were assayed using our multiplex real-time PCR versus the standard TaqMan PCR. Strong correlations were demonstrated between the two different assay systems for both HHV-6A (R² = 0.913) and HHV-6B (R² = 0.909). Therefore, our multiplex HHV-6 species-specific cycling probe real-time PCR is useful for evaluating the precise copy numbers of HHV-6A and B in transplant recipients. However, as HHV-6A copy numbers was affected by presence of high copies of HHV-6B DNA (1 × 10⁶ copies/tube), it may be difficult to measure precise copy numbers of HHV-6A in inherited chromosomally integrated HHV-6B patient. J. Med. Virol. 88:1628–1635, 2016.