DETECTION OF HUMAN POLYOMAVIRUSES AND PAPILLOMAVIRUSES IN ORAL SPECIMENS OF IMMUNOCOMPETENT AND HIV POSITIVE SUBJECTS

ABSTRACT The oral cavity of healthy subjects is colonized by several and different microorganisms, such as viruses, bacteria, fungi and protozoa. Many of these are commensal species, which are essential to maintain a health status when in equilibrium with the environment, but can became pathogenic and capable to eliciting disease when occur environmental changes or shifts in the composition of the oral microbiota. Despite there are numerous studies concerning the bacterial communities inhabiting the oral cavity, there are very few studies defining the oral viral community and their role, if any, in the development of oral diseases. To date, the Human herpesviruses (HHVs) have been often associated with the development of periodontitis, while the Human Papillomaviruses (HPVs) have been studied as possible risk factor for the development of oropharyngeal cancer. Additionally, the Human Polyomaviruses (HPyVs) seems to be an excellent candidates as possible factors involved in the pathogenesis of oral diseases. Given the increasing incidence of oral diseases and the very limited study of viral involvement in these disorders, our study was aimed to give new insights on the possible presence of HPyVs and HPVs genomes in the oral mucosa of both 105 healthy subjects, without or with periodontitis (9) and 20 HIV positive patients. Nucleic acids isolation from saliva, buccal swab and paper points and subsequent Real Time PCR were the employed techniques. We could observe that the prevalence of HPyVs was significantly higher in the group of HIV positive subjects (60.0%) compared to the control group (25.7%), and among the HPyVs, the most prevalent were MCPyV: MCPyV genome was detected at the highest percentage (20.8%) and with high viral load (mean: 3.15*E+07) in all types of the oral specimens. Regarding the presence of HPVs, three high risk-HPV genotypes were detected in 2/20 (10.0%) HIV positive subjects, only in the saliva samples. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine and compare the presence of HPyVs and HPVs in a broad range of oral sample types. Based on our results, we could conclude that MCPyV may be part of the normal viroma of the oral cavity. Nonetheless, its well-known association with the Merkel Cell carcinoma leads to state the its presence should be monitored, in order to verify whether an association between MCPyV and oral diseases can be rule out.