DALLAS March 8, 2002 UT Southwestern researchers have established a link between human non-Hodgkins lymphomas and a monkey virus carried by some people, possibly opening new avenues for detection, prevention and treatment.
In the study, published in todays issue of the British medical journal The Lancet, researchers examined nearly 400 tumors and control tissues, and found the viral footprint for simian virus 40 (SV40) in the tumors of 43 percent of non-Hodgkin lymphoma patients. The virus, predominantly of the B-cell type, was present in 9 percent of Hodgkin lymphoma cases, a significantly lower rate. The percentage of SV40-positive findings among healthy subjects and patients with other types of adult and pediatric cancers, other than bone tumors, was zero to 6 percent.
Approximately 287,000 new non-Hodgkin lymphoma cases are diagnosed worldwide every year.
SV40 was first transmitted to humans between 1955 and 1963 in contaminated batches of polio vaccine. As many as 30 million people may have been vaccinated with the tainted serum. Persons born after 1963 also have been found to carry the virus, but scientists are uncertain how the virus was transmitted to them. Estimates for the number of carriers range between 2 percent and 13 percent of the population, although large population based studies need to be done.
Dr. Adi Gazdar, professor in the Hamon Center for Therapeutic Oncology Research and the Department of Pathology and principal investigator on the study, said the findings fully confirm earlier research on hamsters that associated SV40 with brain and bone tumors, mesotheliomas (tumors in the lining of the lungs and other organs) and B-cell lymphomas.
SV40 previously had been associated in humans with brain and bone cancer and mesothelioma, but the human lymphoma connection is new. The rates of virus detection in HIV-positive and HIV-negative subjects with lymphoma were similar, a fact that came as a surprise t
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Contact: Wayne Carter
Wayne.Carter@UTSouthwestern.edu
214-648-3404
UT Southwestern Medical Center
7-Mar-2002