Prevalence of TTV-DNA in blood samples from healthy subjects, microcytic anaemia sufferers, dialysis patients and kidney-transplant (former dialysis) patients in the city of Messina.

With the aim of helping define the epidemiological picture of the TT virus, we used the “heminested” PCR method to quantify the prevalence of TTV-DNA in the blood samples of 163 subjects, divided into four groups: healthy (80), microcytic anaemia sufferers (30), dialysis patients (27) and kidney-transplant (former dialysis) patients (26). In the amplification phase, primers were targeted on the N22 fragment of the ORF1 encoding region. In accordance with the findings of other Authors, our results indicate that TTV is widespread, both in the healthy population and in pathological groups, and that the percentage of prevalence is on average 43.41% higher in subjects with hepatitis B and/or C than in those without liver disease. Statistical comparison shows that none of the pathological conditions taken into consideration has a dominant role in the manifestation of TTV infection, also in relation to healthy subjects. The transaminase (ALT) values were found to be 30.89%, higher among subjects coinfected by hepatitis B and/or C and TTV, compared to corresponding hepatic patients without TTV. This finding supports the hypothesis that an active role is played by TTV in aggravating concomitant hepatitis B and/or C, but further studies should be performed to clarify the role of TTV in this controversial aspect of its epidemiology.