Frequent detection of Epstein-Barr viral deoxyribonucleic acid and absence of cytomegalovirus deoxyribonucleic acid in Hodgkin's disease and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome-related Hodgkin's disease.

Epstein-Barr viral DNA (EBV DNA) has been detected in 20 to 58% of Hodgkin's disease tumors analyzed by Southern blotting or polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Because patients with Hodgkin's disease are generally immunodepressed, it is possible that the EBV is not directly involved in the pathogenesis of Hodgkin's disease but is merely detectable by molecular techniques because of reactivation of a latent infection. The purpose of this study was to determine if EBV DNA could be detected in an even higher percentage of cases of Hodgkin's disease, including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)-related Hodgkin's disease, by using newly designed, PCR amplification primers, and to compare the incidence of EBV DNA with the incidence of another common, latent virus (cytomegalovirus) in Hodgkin's disease tissue. The PCR was performed on DNA extracted from cells from 15 benign hyperplastic lymph nodes and from 15 cryopreserved cases of Hodgkin's disease, including 2 cases of AIDS-related Hodgkin's disease. For negative controls, PCR was also performed without template DNA and on genomic DNA from E. coli, calf thymus, a murine myeloma, and from a human cell line. After 32 cycles of amplification, a 225 base-pair amplification product comigrating with an EBV-positive control was detected in none of the negative controls but was present in 14 out of 15 cases (93%) of Hodgkin's disease, including both cases of AIDS-related Hodgkin's disease, and in 2 out of 15 cases of benign lymphoid hyperplasia. By contrast, cytomegalovirus DNA was undetectable by PCR in any of our specimens. We conclude that in our study set, the PCR procedure detected EBV-DNA but not cytomegalovirus DNA in a high percentage of cases of Hodgkin's disease, including two cases of AIDS-related Hodgkin's disease. These findings strengthen the hypothesis that EBV may be involved in the pathogenesis of Hodgkin's disease and AIDS-related Hodgkin's disease.