Medical Virology Section, Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
Blood. 2010 Nov 25;116(22):4546-59. doi: 10.1182/blood-2010-05-285452. Epub 2010 Aug 10.
Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is present in B cells in the blood of healthy people; few studies have looked for EBV in other cell types in blood from patients with lymphoproliferative disorders. We use a new technique combining immunofluorescent cell-surface staining and fluorescent in situ hybridization to quantify both EBV copy number per cell and cell types in blood from patients with high EBV DNA loads. In addition to CD20(+) B cells, EBV was present in plasmablast/plasma cells in the blood of 50% of patients, in monocytes or T cells in a small proportion of patients, and in "non-B, non-T, non-monocytes" in 69% of patients. The mean EBV copy number in B cells was significantly higher than in plasmablast/plasma cells. There was no correlation between EBV load and virus copy number per cell. Although we detected CD21, the EBV B-cell receptor, on EBV-infected B cells, we could not detect it on virus-infected T cells. These findings expand the range of cell types infected in the blood. Determining the number of EBV genomes per cell and the type of cells infected in patients with high EBV loads may provide additional prognostic information for the development of EBV lymphoproliferative diseases.
EB 病毒（EBV）存在于健康人的血液 B 细胞中；很少有研究在患有淋巴增生性疾病的患者的血液中寻找其他细胞类型中的 EBV。我们使用一种新的技术，结合免疫荧光细胞表面染色和荧光原位杂交，以定量高 EBV DNA 载量患者血液中的 EBV 拷贝数和细胞类型。除了 CD20(+) B 细胞外，50%的患者血液中的浆母细胞/浆细胞中存在 EBV，少数患者的单核细胞或 T 细胞中存在 EBV，69%的患者存在“非 B、非 T、非单核细胞”。B 细胞中的 EBV 拷贝数明显高于浆母细胞/浆细胞。EBV 载量与每个细胞中的病毒拷贝数之间没有相关性。尽管我们在 EBV 感染的 B 细胞上检测到 EBV B 细胞受体 CD21，但在 EBV 感染的 T 细胞上却无法检测到。这些发现扩大了受感染的细胞类型范围。确定高 EBV 负荷患者的每个细胞中的 EBV 基因组数和感染的细胞类型可能为 EBV 淋巴增生性疾病的发展提供额外的预后信息。
