Epidemiology of classic Kaposi's sarcoma, with special reference to mediterranean population.

An excess of classic Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) in individuals of southern European ancestry has long been suspected and recently quantified in terms of age-standardized rates. In Italy and most notably in southern Italy for the period 1976-84, prior to the AIDS epidemic, KS incidence rates were two-to-three-fold higher than in the United States and Sweden and many ten-fold higher than in England and Wales and Australia. A high frequency of classic KS has also been documented in Israel and, in low-risk countries, in individuals born in southern Europe and the Middle East. Many infections have been suspected to play a role in the etiology of KS, including cytomegalovirus, malaria and, most recently, a new virus of the herpes family, identified in AIDS-associated and classic KS. The present review deals with epidemiologic data concerning KS in the Mediterranean and stresses the opportunity to combine the study of KS in AIDS as well as non-AIDS patients in order to shed light on this no longer rare disease.