Rare case of Aseptic meningitis caused by torque teno virus in infant: a report

An extremely rare case of a 2 month's old infant who was admitted in a Japanese hospital with aseptic meningitis attributable to torque teno virus infection, was reported in the Journal of Medical Case Reports.

Viral meningitis is most common in young children; the incidence decreases with age. Although most cases are believed to be self-limiting, morbidity may be considerable.Torque teno virus-induced aseptic meningitis has not been documented, although torque teno virus infections still remain under consideration for etiological agents.

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Torque Teno virus or TTV was first found in patients with non-A-E hepatitis. The virus belongs to Betatorquevirus genus of the relatively new family, Anelloviridae. TTV virus is highly prevalent like other human anelloviruses. Previous research has demonstrated the prevalence of TTV in 48%-72% of blood donors. the virus can likely infect a wide range of tissues.

This article published in the Journal of Medical Case Reports presented a case of a 2-month-old Japanese boy who was brought to Showa General Hospital, Kodaira, Tokyo as he was irritable, drowsy, and lethargic. He was admitted based on his test results which indicated the possibility of septic meningitis, according to the authors.

The authors stated that "He was started on treatment with high-dose antibiotics and steroids. On the third day of hospitalization, he became afebrile with improvement in his general status and was discharged on the sixth day. He had no developmental problems for up to 1 year after discharge."

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The authors performed a Metagenomic ribonucleic acid-Seq pathogen detection using next-generation sequencing of a sample of his cerebrospinal fluid, which was collected at admission. The reports revealed three short reads homologous to those in torque teno virus out of a total of 1,708,516 reads. This finding indicated that the patient was positive compared to the torque teno virus-negative cerebrospinal fluid samples (controls) from 13 other patients.

The torque teno virus has been shown to have a whole-genome sequence of 2810 nt by a polymerase chain reaction. The authors prepared a recombinant GP2 antigen from torque teno virus and used it to study the patient's anti-torque teno virus immune response. An anti-GP2 serum immunoglobulin M response was detected, providing further supportive evidence of torque teno virus infection.

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Journal of Medical Case Reports