HUMAN HERPES-VIRUS-8 (KAPOSIS-SARCOMA HERPES-VIRUS) AND MALIGNANT LYMPHOPROLIFERATIONS IN FRANCE - A MOLECULAR STUDY OF 250 CASES INCLUDING2 AIDS-ASSOCIATED BODY CAVITY BASED LYMPHOMAS

The new human herpes virus 8 (HHV8) was recently detected in cases of body cavity based lymphoma (BCBL), a rare B cell lymphoma, mostly AIDS -associated. We investigated for HHV8 DNA sequences a series of 250 B or T cell lymphoproliferative malignancies, as seen in France, includi ng 126 leukemias and 124 lymphomas (232 nan-AIDS-associated and 18 AID S-associated tumors), HHV8 sequences were detected in only three patie nts, The first two were homosexual males, HIV-infected since 1985 who suffered from a BCBL initially characterized in one case by a pleural lymphomatous effusion and a peritoneal one in the other case. A high l evel of HHV8 copies was detected in the tumoral cells of these two BCB L, In contrast, in the third positive patient who had an AIDS-associat ed immunoblastic lymphoma, the HHV8 sequences level was quite low. In the two BCBL patients, the HHV8-infected clonal B cells had a large im munoblastic feature with an indeterminate phenotype and were also infe cted by Epstein-Barr virus, In one BCBL case, a semiquantitative PCR a nalysis revealed that the HHV8 sequences were much more abundant in th e effusion tumor cells than in the cutaneous Kaposi's biopsy while no HHV8 sequence was detectable In the peripheral blood lymphocytes. This study reports HHV8-assoclated BCBL in European AIDS patients and conf irms that HHV8 is present at a high copy number in the tumoral B cells of this malignancy, Furthermore, HHV8 does not seem to play a pathoge nic role in any of the other T or B malignant lymphoid neoplasias stud ied so far, This study also stresses the necessity for quantification studies in interpretation of a positive PCR analysis for HHV8 sequence s, especially in patients at risk for HIV infection or Kaposi's sarcom a.