• A comparison of prevalence Human herpes virus 6 (HHV-6) between patients with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and healthy individuals through polymerase chain reaction method (PCR) in thyroid biopsy specimen
  • Zahra Darvish molla,1,*
    1. Islamic Azad University, Tehran Medical Sciences & technology


  • Introduction: Hashimoto’s thyroiditis is a chronic inflammation of the thyroid gland and an autoimmune disease that causes hypothyroidism. Genetic, internal and environmental factors are the causes of this disease. Due to the fact that human herpes viruses such as herpes virus type 6 (HHV-6) are involved in some autoimmune disorders, they may also play a role in causing this disease.
  • Methods: In the present study, 64 samples of thyroid paraffin tissue (32 samples of thyroid paraffin tissue of healthy individuals as control and 32 samples of thyroid paraffin tissue of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis patients) were taken from the pathology department of Loghman Hakim Hospital in Tehran. Demographic information of patients was collected by a questionnaire. After DNA extraction from the samples, Nested PCR technique was performed using specific primers and the reaction product was electrophoresed.
  • Results: Herpes virus type 6 genome results in thyroid tissue of 34.4% of healthy individuals (81.8% female and 18.2% male) and 46.9% of patients with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (73.3% female and 26.7% male). It was found that this difference in virus frequency between the two groups was not statistically significant (P value=0.309). There was also no statistically significant relationship between the prevalence of human herpes virus type 6 and age and sex.
  • Conclusion: Comparison of HHV-6 infection between control and patient groups showed that although the number of infected people in Hashimoto’s patients was higher than the control group, but this difference was not statistically significant; Therefore, HHV-6 can not be associated with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.
  • Keywords: Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, Autoimmune disease, Human herpes virus type 6, Polymerase chain reaction.