Human herpesvirus 8 in Kaposi's sarcoma and Kaposi's sarcoma-mimicking vascular tumors

Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) had been a rare and unusual vascular tumor until a recent epidemic of a disseminated and fulminant form of KS in AIDS patients. Infectious agents have been suspected of causing KS, and recently partial genomic DNA sequences of human herpesvirus 8 (HHV8) have been identified in AIDS-associated KS lesions. Since then, genomic DNA sequences of HHV8 have been isolated in other forms of KS. Although the partial genomic DNA sequence of HHV8 was reported to be, if rare, identified in vascular tumors other than Kaposi's sarcoma (KS), the presence of HHV8 in a very large fraction of KS indicates that detection of HHV8 by PCR is a useful auxiliary tool in differentiating KS from other KS-mimicking vascular tumors. We examined whether the 233-bp segment of the viral DNA was detected in Korean patients with KS and other KS-mimicking vascular tumors. HHV8 sequences were identified in all of nine classic type of KS but not in three epithelioid hemangioendotheliomas and seven angiosarcomas. Our results confirm the relatively restricted distribution of HHV8 and also argue against the likelihood of secondary colonization of KS cells by HHV8.