The prevalence of human endogenous retroviruses in the plasma of major burn patients

Background: Approximately 8% of the human genome is composed of retroviral sequences, which are known as human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) and, have been implicated in both health status and disease. Recently, indirect evidence for a possible role of retroviral elements in the systemic response to stress signals has been provided by several studies. In the present study, we sought to evaluate the relationship between HERVs and major burn in humans. Method: We investigated the prevalence of HERV families by reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR) in cell-free plasma samples from patients with burns and from normal individuals. Results: Different prevalences of HERV families were observed in the plasma samples from the burn patient group and normal group. Compared with the prevalences of HERV-W and HERV-K in the normal group, in the burn patient group, the prevalence of HERV-W was significantly lower (P < 0.001), but the prevalence of HERV-K was higher (P = 0.059). Conclusions: Our study of the prevalences of HERVs revealed that the activation of certain HERV families may be influenced not only by burns but also by the initial treatments that were used to address these injuries.