Identification and Pathogenic Potential of Orofacial Herpetic Clinical Isolates in Northeast Mexico

Background Herpes simplex viruses 1 (human herpes virus types 1, HSV-1) often cause recurrent infections that affect the skin, mouth, lips, and eyes and eventually induce herpetic encephalitis. A high percentage of the population is infected with HSV-1 in which it produces a variety of these orofacial disease. In Mexico, there are no studies to determine the effects of viral virulence of clinical facial dermal isolates of active infections caused by the Herpes simplex virus 1. Objective of this work was to compare the herpetic activity of human clinical isolates from northeast Mexico against HSV-1 KOS as reference strain, which induces experimental murine model keratitis disease produced by infecting mouse corneas. Methods and Materials we compared several clinical isolate of HSV-1 obtained from 25 patients diagnosed with HSV-1 active, according to acyclovir (ACV) susceptibility, thymidine kinase (TK) polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and experimental Balb/c mice model as viral infections in vivo were evaluated. Results we found that several clinical isolates showed ACV resistance (48%) and pathogenic potential (PP) differences that caused ocular infection more or less than reference HSV-1 KOS strain. In Conclusion, some clinical isolate from northeast Mexico shown differences that caused ocular infection more or less than reference HSV-1 KOS strain.