Epstein‐Barr virus in Hodgkin's disease: frequency of a 30‐bp deletion in the latent membrane protein (LMP‐1) oncogene in South African patients

Abstract

In recent years, substantial evidence has accumulated implicating Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) in the pathogenesis of Hodgkin’s disease (HD) and some non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas (Pallesen et al., 1993; Weiss et al., 1989). It has been postulated that EBV in HD interferes with the pathways of cell differentiation, through the expression of an integral membrane EBV-protein, latent membrane protein 1 (LMP-1)(Dawson et al., 1990). Recent studies have identified mutations and deletions in the LMP-1 gene (BNLF-1) amplified from some cases of HD (Knecht et al., 1993b, 1995; Sandvej et al., 1994). This supported earlier work by Hu et al.(1991) who reported a 30-bp deletion (del-LMP-1) and 7 single-base mutations in the carboxy-terminal region of the BNLF-1 gene in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). It has therefore been proposed that alterations within this region of the BNLF-1 gene could render an EBV genome …