C. Berger et al., THE 30-BP DELETION VARIANT OF EPSTEIN-BARR VIRUS-ENCODED LATENT MEMBRANE PROTEIN-1 PREVAILS IN ACUTE INFECTIOUS-MONONUCLEOSIS, The Journal of infectious diseases, 176(5), 1997, pp. 1370-1373
To assess the frequency of malignancy-associated 30-bp deletion varian
ts of the latent membrane protein 1 (LMP-I) in benign conditions, a co
mparative sequence analysis was done using samples from 20 American ch
ildren with acute infectious mononucleosis and 16 Swiss children with
chronic tonsillar hyperplasia, The 30-bp deletion variant (LMP-l-del)
was present in 66% of patients (12/20 with infectious mononucleosis an
d 12/16 with tonsillar hyperplasia). Two additional patients had a 3-b
p deletion and an inframe insertion of 18 nucleotides, respectively, A
ll but 1 isolate had numerous nonsilent point mutations, These data id
entify a hypervariable region within the C-terminus of LMP-I, in a dom
ain required for maximal stimulation of NF-KB activity, These data dem
onstrate that LMP-1-del variants are frequent in acute infectious mono
nucleosis and tonsillar hyperplasia and identical to those observed in
Epstein-Barr virus-associated AIDS-related lymphoma.