Epstein-Barr Virus and Breast Cancer
Abstract
Epstein Barr virus (EBV) has been implicated as a cofactor in several human malignancies. The possibility that EBV may play a role in the development of breast cancer has been raised in recent years. However, a number of reports have shown conflicting results. This could be related to the different assays employed and also possible geographical variations in the incidence of this infection. We collected 203 cases of invasive breast carcinomas, as well as 30 non-neoplastic tissues adjacent to the tumors from 3 different geographical regions (USA, India and Kuwait), conventional polymerase chain reaction (PCR), real-time PCR and EBV-encoded small nonpolyadenylated RNA (EBER-l) in situ hybridization (ISH) were used to study these cases. The data suggest that EBV is present in a small subset of breast carcinomas, however, the high PCR positivity is likely due to the presence of latently infected lymphocytes; the incidence and/or the viral load of EBV associated with breast cancers may be geographically variable and there is a discrepancy between the PCR and ISH assays. Whether the discrepancy is only due to the detection of EBV by PCR on infiltrated lymphocytes or there is deleted EBV in tumor cells that fail to express EBERS needs to be explored by further studies.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2002
- Accession Number
- ADA412816
Entities
People
- Guimei Zhou
- Kishor G. Bhatia
- Wing C. Chan
Organizations
- University of Nebraska Medical Center