Disappearance of the Epstein-Barr virus in a relapse of Hodgkin's disease

H J Delecluse1, T Marafioti, M Hummel

  • 1Consultation and Reference Center for Lymph Node Pathology and Hematopathology, Institute of Pathology, Klinikum Benjamin Franklin, Free University of Berlin, Germany.

Hodgkin's disease (HD) is associated with the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) in approximately half of cases. This is a report of a case of nodular sclerosing HD of the B-cell type that was associated with EBV in the initial manifestation, but was found to be EBV-negative in the relapse of the tumour. Both tumours displayed similar clinical, pathological, and immunohistochemical features. This finding implies that in a given individual EBV can be lost from malignant tumours and therefore shows that the EBV infection is not required to maintain neoplastic growth of HD tumour cells.

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