About this Medicine article
Evolution of the BK polyomavirus: epidemiological, anthropological and clinical implications by Yoshiaki Yogo; Chie Sugimoto; Shan Zhong; Yukio Homma is a Medicine article available to read on EtoBox.
## Abstract BK polyomavirus (BKV) is essentially ubiquitous in all human populations worldwide. Asymptomatic infection with this virus occurs during early childhood, leading to life‐long persistence in the kidney. BKV has four subtypes that can be identified using serological and genotyping methods. The evolutionary aspects of BKV have remained poorly understood due to the limited availability of BKV genomes, since urinary excretion of BKV DNA is detected primarily in immunocompromised individuals. However, we have found that BKV DNA sequences can often be amplified from non‐immunocompromised elderly individuals, using a highly sensitive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with highly concentrated urinary DNA as the source of viral DNA. Using this approach, we have PCR‐amplified and sequenced a large number of partial and complete BKV genomes from various human populations worldwide and conducted a series of evolutionary studies using these sequences. We have shown that subtypes I and IV evolved into four and six subgroups, respectively, with each having a close relationship with a particular human population. In addition, we have provided evidence supporting the hypothesis that BKV st
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- Author
- Yoshiaki Yogo; Chie Sugimoto; Shan Zhong; Yukio Homma
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons; Wiley (John Wiley & Sons); John Wiley & Sons Inc.; Wiley (ISSN 1052-9276)
- Published
- 2009
- Language
- EN
- Field
- Medicine (Health Sciences)