Author(s)

A. Sh. Hasan, Sh. Mehdi, A. Hasan Noor

College of Medicine, Diyala University, Diyala, Iraq.

Background: Human herpesvirus type 6 (HHV-6) has been shown to infect almost all children by 4 years of age. Primary infection causes an undifferentiated febrile illness, with approximately 30% of children exhibiting the classic clinical manifestations of roseola infantum. Objectives: The current study was carried out to explore the anti-HHV-6 IgG positivity rate as a marker of past infection among apparently healthy infants and to figure out the effect of certain infant and family characteristics on the infectivity rate. Materials and methods: This is a cross sectional study conducted in Diyala province during the period from August 2017-July 2018. A total of 180 apparently healthy infants were included, their ages ranged between 6 - 24 months. They consist of 100 males with mean age ± SD 15.05 ± 6.42 months and 80 females with mean age ± SD 15.56 ± 6.66 months. Human privacy was respected by obtaining parental consent. Venous blood samples were collected aseptically from each participant. Sera were separated and tested for the anti-HHV6 IgG (Sunlong Biotech, China) by Enzyme Linked Immunosorbant assay (ELISA) technique. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS version 23 and P value < 0.05 was considered significant. Results: The overall anti-HHV6 IgG positivity rate among apparently healthy infants was 43.9%. The highest positivity rate was among the age group 19 - 24 months compared to other age groups, and the positivity rate was insignificantly higher among males compared to females (44.0% vs. 43.8%, P = 0.973). Furthermore, the positivity rate was insignificantly higher among infants on mixed feeding compared to other feeding categories (55.3%, P = 0.083). The results also recognized that infants who had negative history of hospitalization had higher but insignificant positivity rate compared to their counterpart (46.8% vs. 26.9%, P = 0.065). Interestingly, a significantly higher anti-HHV6 IgG positivity rate was found among infants whom their families had current history of positive case (62.2%) compared to families with negative history (35.8%) or those with past history of positive case (50.0%, P = 0.006). Conclusion: About one half of apparently healthy infants aged up to two years of Diyala population have anti-HHV6 IgG antibodies and the presence of intrafamilial primary HHV-6 positive case is markedly associated with increased rate of anti-HHV6 IgG among siblings.

Human Herpesvirus-6, Roseola Infantum, Diyala

Hasan, A. , Mehdi, S. and Noor, A. (2019) The Seropositivity Rate of Human Herpesvirus Type 6 among Infants in Diyala Province, Iraq. Journal of Biosciences and Medicines, 7, 129-137. doi: 10.4236/jbm.2019.76008.