DNA polymorphism among isolates from multiple sites of a patient with chronic herpes simplex virus, type 1 infection

DNA polymorphisms among independent isolates of herpes simplex virus (HSV) type 1 were studied from a 7-year-old male patient with recurrent infections of the skin and internal organs. In the patient's serum, HSV antibodies could not be detected by complement fixation, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), or neutralization tests. ELISA tests for the presence of antibodies to human immunodeficiency virus were also negative. One HSV isolate was obtained from mesenteric nodes biopsied in 1983; one from skin in 1984; and three (postmortem) from brain, lungs, and liver in 1985. Restriction enzymes Eco RI, Bgl II, Hind III, Kpn I, and Bam H1 digestion patterns of the five isolates were similar. However, Sal I digests of isolates from skin, mesenteric nodes, lungs, and liver showed variations that were distinct from that of the brain isolate. Although Sal I digests of skin, mesenteric nodes, lungs, and liver isolates share a common variation in lacking F and G, the liver isolate can be further differentiated because of the gain of a restriction site on the H fragment. Thus, the three distinct variants observed were the isolates from brain (variant 1); from skin, mesenteric nodes, and lungs (variant 2); and from liver (variant 3). The fragments involved in variations among these isolates (presence or absence of Sal, G and H) are from the unique short and long regions (invariable regions) of the genome and therefore do not show heterogeneity in size. The extent of variation among these isolates is less than that seen among epidemiologically unrelated strains, suggesting that they originated from a single infecting strain, probably the brain isolate.