[Epstein-Barr virus and malignant lymphoma]

Association between Epstein-Barr virus and malignant lymphomas such as Burkitt's lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease(HD), nasal T/NK cell lymphoma(NTL), immunodefficiency-associated lymphoma, and pyothorax associated lymphoma (PAL) has been suggested. Among these, HD, SNL, PAL are relatively common in Japan. For HD, EBV association was found in the disease peak incidences; those are peak in older adults in Japan, older peak of the bimodal peaks in Western countries, and unimodal peak in the childhood in the developing countries. For NTL, EBV was associated with almost all cases with CD56+ phenotype and cases with polymorphic reticulosis morphology with CD56- phenotype. For PAL, most cases are EBV-associated, about 40% of these show Type B subtype, the ratio of type A EBV to type B EBV in PAL was similar to those in immunodeficiency-associated lymphomas.