PURPOSE To document etiology and predictive value of clinical diagnosis in laboratory confirmed viral diseases. METHODS Reports of culture-positive cases of samples collected from patients presenting from January 1987 - December 2001 were evaluated. RESULTS One thousand nine hundred and sixty-four (1964) cultures were submitted during 1987-2001. Twenty-six percent were positive (514). Human...

BACKGROUND Diarrhea in seropositive human immunodeficiency virus patients is one of the most important and disabling symptoms, and often decreases their quality of life. Cytomegalovirus colitis is among the principal causes of this symptom and colonoscopy is the gold standard examination to diagnose it. AIM To define the main endoscopic findings in seropositive human immunodeficiency virus pa...

Herpesvirus maturation requires translocation of glycoprotein B homologue from the endoplasmic reticulum to the inner nuclear membrane. Glycoprotein B of human cytomegalovirus was used in this context as a model protein. To identify a specific signal sequence within human cytomegalovirus glycoprotein B acting in a modular fashion, coding sequences were recombined with reporter proteins. Immunof...

Cytomegalovirus-stimulated CD4(+) lymphocytes from seropositive but not seronegative donors suppressed viral gene expression in primary human astrocytes. This suppressive activity was mediated through soluble factors. These findings suggest that CD4(+) lymphocytes play a role in defense of the brain against cytomegalovirus.

Currently, there is no evidence whether ganciclovir, or its oral prodrug valganciclovir, penetrates into the cerebrospinal fluid of human infants treated for congenital cytomegalovirus infection. Here, we report a case study providing evidence that ganciclovir, administered as valganciclovir, reaches the infant's cerebrospinal fluid when used at the currently recommended dose for congenital cyt...

Simian cytomegalovirus was substituted for human cytomegalovirus in an enzyme-linked immunoassay. Unlike the indirect immunofluorescence assay which demonstrates a two-way cross-reactivity, only one-way cross-reactivity was observed. Altering the method of simian antigen preparation gave some insight other this different reactivity.