Blood, Vol. 95 No. 12 (June 15), 2000:
pp. 3986-3989
Detection of active hepatitis C virus and hepatitis G virus/GB
virus C replication in bone marrow in human subjects
Marek Radkowski,
Joanna Kubicka,
Elzbieta Kisiel,
Janusz Cianciara,
Marek Nowicki,
Jorge Rakela, and
Tomasz Laskus
From the Institute of Infectious Diseases, Warsaw Medical Academy;
Municipal Hospital, Kielce, Poland; Maternal-Child Virology Research
Laboratory, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA; and
Division of Transplantation Medicine, Mayo Clinic Scottsdale, AZ.
We have analyzed the presence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) and
hepatitis G virus (HGV) sequences in bone marrow and serum samples from
48 patients of a hematologic outpatient clinic. HCV RNA was detected in
18 (38%) and 15 (31%) and HGV RNA was detected in 6 (13%) and 9 (19%) of serum and bone marrow samples, respectively. In 3 patients,
HGV RNA was detectable in bone marrow but not in the serum; 2 of these
patients were negative for the presence of specific antibodies. Using a
highly strand-specific Tth-based reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain
reaction (RT-PCR), the presence of HCV RNA and HGV RNA negative strand
was demonstrated in 4 and 5 bone marrow samples, respectively. Our
study shows that HCV and HGV can replicate in bone marrow; in the case
of HGV, analysis of serum may underestimate the true prevalence of infection.
