Human Cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infection was not correlated with overall survival in glioblastomas

Song Han, Peng-Fei Wang, You-Xue Xing, Hong-Wang Song, Kun Yao,  Zhi-Xiong Lin

Abstract:

There were many arguments about the presence of HCMV (Human Cytomegalovirus) in malignant gliomas. This study was to investigate the presence and prognostic value of HCMV in glioblastomas. 68 patients including 64 primary glioblastomas and 4 secondary glioblastomas were involved in this study. Immunofluorescence was adopted for detecting glycoprotein B (gB) and glycoprotein H (gH) of HCMV’s in glioblastoma tissues. Kaplan–Meier Analysis and Chi Square were used to evaluate patients’ survival and the association between HCMV infection and patients’ characteristics respectively. We found that the presence rate of gB and gH were 48.5% (33/68) and 42.6% (29/68) in glioblastomas respectively. The co-occurrence of gB and gH was 30.8%, and the presence rates of either gB or gH in glioblastomas was 60.3%. While IDH R132H mutations were significantly correlated with a better clinical outcome (p=0.006), the presence of neither gB (p=0.551) nor gH (p=0.871) had prognostic values. Furthermore, there was no significant association between the presence of HCMV and gliomas’ characteristics, neither with patients’ age, gender, KPS, IDH mutations nor PTEN loss. In conclusion, our results supported the fact that HCMV was detected in glioblastomas. However, no predictive value of HCMV was observed, the treatment of glioblastomas targeting HCMV was needed to be revalued by studied again.