Serological Study of Human Cytomegalovirus in Thalassemia Patients and Blood Donors and its Relation to IL-6 in Kirkuk City

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine the relationship of human cytomegalovirus in thalassemic patients and blood donors in relation to IL-6 in Kirkuk City through screening of anti-human cytomegalovirus IgM and IgG antibodies in the serum of thalassemic patients and blood donors by using ELISA technique to detect the IgG and IgM in blood samples. Blood samples were collected from 200 thalassemic patients and 180 samples from blood donor. The study revealed that the positive rates for HCMV-IgG , HCMV-IgM and both HCMV IgM/IgG were positive among 152(76.0%),14,(7.0%) and 3(1.5%) respectively. The rates of HCMV antibodies among 180 blood donors HCMV-IgG was detected in 68 (37.77%), the seropositive for HCMV-IgM was 7(3.88%), while for both HCMV-IgG and HCMV-IgM was 4(2.22%). The HCMV elaborate cellular and immune manipulation strategies to maintain the virus-host equilibrium and the human immune response by humeral and cellular immunity including some cytokines as IL-6, so the rates of increased serum IL-6 was high among most HCMV seropositive subjects enrolled in this study although the highest rate were within thalassemic patients.