Prevalence of TT Virus Infection in US Blood Donors and Populations at Risk for Acquiring Parenterally Transmitted Viruses

Abstract
Two overlapping sets of TT virus (TTV)—specific polymerase chain reaction primers were used to test for presence of TTV, which was found in approximately 10% of US volunteer blood donors, 13% of commercial blood donors, and 17% of intravenous drug abusers. The rate of TTV infection among US non-A, non-B, non-C, non-D, non-E hepatitis patients was only 2%. Among commercial blood donors and intravenous drug abusers, only 1%–3% of the TTV-positive individuals were coinfected with GB virus C (GBV-C), a parenterally transmitted virus. This suggests that GBV-C and TTV may have different routes of transmission. Comparison of the sensitivities of 2 TTV polymerase chain reaction (PCR) primer sets showed that the majority of samples were detected with only 1 of the 2 sets. Therefore, previous studies in which only a single PCR primer pair was used may have significantly underestimated the true prevalence of TTV.