Dobrava virus RNA load in patients who have hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome.

To asses the role of virus load in the pathogenesis of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, the serum Dobrava virus RNA load in 46 patients was measured with a novel quantitative real-time reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction assay and compared to the disease severity. The level of viremia, detected in 26 patients, ranged from 10(2)-10(8) copies/mL of serum. The patients with severe disease had, on average, higher viral RNA loads than patients with a milder course of disease (6.15 vs. 4.67 log(10) copies/mL; P = .053). These results suggest that the Dobrava virus load might be associated with the severity of disease.