Molecular Detection and Predominance of Human Torque Teno Virus in Children's with acute hepatitis and Environmental Waters

Introduction: Epidemiological studies have shown that TTV is described worldwide in various populations. The prevalence of TTV viremia in healthy adults of developed countries is in the range of 1-34%. Prevalence reported from third world countries was found to be higher, typically 40-70%. In people who have received multiple blood transfusion; the virus is almost universally present with more than one subtype in each individual. Objectives: This study was carried out to determine the incidence of TTV infection among children's, wastewater, and drinking water, also genotyping of detected TTV strains circulating in the studied samples collected from Cairo. Subjects and Methods: stool samples were collected from 152 Children's with age range from 6 months to 12 years. Also, 45 wastewater samples and 45 drinking water samples were collected monthly from inlet and outlet from wastewater treatment plant (Zenin) and from El-Giza drinking water treatment plant. Collected samples were submitted to semi-nested PCR for amplification of 3' non translated region of TTV. The expected fragment sizes of PCR products were 390 bp and 271 bp for the first and second round of PCR, respectively. PCR products, of 2nd round of some positive samples, were purified for nucleotide sequence analysis in both directions. Fragments nucleotide sequences were compared to sequences derived from the corresponding TTV genome of the same regions deposited in the Gene Bank. Results and Conclusion: Obtained data showed that the incidence of TTV in children's stool samples was 59.2% (90/152), and in sewage samples was 64.4% (29/45), while it was 17.8% (8/45) in drinking water samples. Statistical analysis indicated that there no significant difference in TTV infection between male and female in infant and early childhood age groups. The phylogenic tree of positive samples confirmed that the isolated virus sequencing was 100% of nucleotide identity to TTV isolate isolated in Germany in 2001 and deposited in the GeneBank with accession no. AF435014, and the sequence of TTV isolated in the present study belong to TTV genotype 28.