The viruses in your blood

If you have ever received a blood transfusion, along with the red blood cells, leukocytes, plasma and other components, you also were infused with a collection of viruses. A recent study of the blood virome of over 8,000 healthy individuals revealed 19 different DNA viruses in 42% of the subjects. Viral DNA sequences were identified among the genome sequences of 8,240 individuals that were determined from blood. Of the 1 petabyte (1 million gigabytes) of sequence data that were generated, about 5% did not correspond to human DNA. Within this fraction, sequences of 94 different viruses were identified. Nineteen of these were human viruses. The method is not expected to reveal RNA viruses except retroviruses which are integrated as DNA copies in the host chromosomes. The most common human viruses identified were herpesviruses, including cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus, herpes simplex virus, and human herpesvirus 7 and 8, found in 14-20% of individuals. Anelloviruses, small viruses with a circular genome, were found in 9% of the samples. Other viruses found in less than 1% of the samples included papillomaviruses, parvoviruses, polyomavirus, adenovirus, human immunodeficiency virus and human T-lymphotropic virus (the latter two integrated into the host DNA). The other 75 viruses are likely contaminants from laboratory reagents or from the environment. These include sequences from non-human retroviruses, four different giant DNA viruses, and a virus of bees, all f...
Source: virology blog - Category: Virology Authors: Tags: Basic virology Information blood viruses transfusion viral virome Source Type: blogs