Molecular study of Human Herpes Virus 6- A and- B, in Patients with Autism Spectrum Disorders in Basra/ south Iraq

Abstract

Background:Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) are complex, pervasive neurodevelopmental conditions with a largely unknown etiology. HHV6 is a common childhood viral infection. The latency of the virus in the CNS might act with other co-factors to disrupt the neurons of the risky children and predisposed them to get ASD so the aim of the present study was to evaluate the prevalence of HHV6 A and B in children with ASD compared to controls.Patients and methods: This is a case – control study, in which 94 Autistic children and 100 apparently healthy control individual   were enrolled. The prevalence of HH6V genotypes A and B were detected by qPCR .Results:There was no significance variation in the percentage of HH6A positive among autistic and the control groups ( P >0.05) while HH6V B were detected in 33 (35.1%) out of 94 ASD patients versus 2 (2%) out of 100 control children and statistically the difference was significant (P value < 0.038).Conclusion: our study shows that the rate of HHV-6 exposure is dissimilar between the studied groups of children