Use of the polymerase chain reaction to detect genomes of human immunodeficiency virus and cytomegalovirus in post‐mortem tissues

Abstract

The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to amplify a 149 base‐pair region of the cytomegalovirus (CMV) genome and a 551 base‐pair region of the HIV‐1 proviral long terminal repeat (LTR) present in DNA extracted from post‐mor‐tem tissue. Multiple tissues (n=116) obtained from 16 patients which were subjected to PCR were also subjected to cell culture and histo‐pathological analyses. One hundred and seven samples (92%) contained CMV DNA and 66/116 (57%) contained HIV proviral DNA at a level of ≥10 genomes. Both viruses were detected in 60/116 (51.7%) of samples, with co‐infection most frequent in the lung (69%). Cell culture for CMV detected 9.3% of the PCR‐positive samples, whilst histology identified CMV inclusions in 15.9% of samples, all of which were CMV PCR‐positive. CMV was most frequently detected in adrenal and lung tissues by histology. These results show that co‐infection with CMV and HIV is a common occurrence in organs from AIDS patients and provide further evidence for a role of cytomegalovirus in the pathogenesis of AIDS.