Human Foamy Virus: An Underestimated Neuropathogen?

Human foamy virus (HFV) is a recently characterized retrovirus which was originally isolated from patients with various neoplastic and degenerative diseases. However, until today it has not been possible to identify HFV as the causative agent of any disease and little is known about its prevalence in human populations. Like HTLV and HIV, HFV encodes the three structural retroviral genes, gag, pol and env, and an additional region containing three open reading frames, bel‐1 to bel‐3. Bel‐1 activates transcription of the long terminal repeat of HFV and HIV. In order to study the consequences of expressing HFV regulatory genes and to investigate a possible pathogenic potential of HFV, we have introduced parts of the HFV genome into the germ line of mice.

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