Epstein-Barr virus in Hodgkin's disease: Correlation of risk factors and disease characteristics with molecular evidence of viral infection

Risk factors suggestive of relatively late exposure to EBV have been consis tently associated with Hodgkin's disease (HD) in younger adults. In additio n, evidence of EBV infection has been found in the Reed-Sternberg cells the mselves in about one-third to one-half of all HD cases. However, no study y et published has correlated these childhood social environment risk factors with the presence of EBV in Hodgkin's tumor cells, We examined whether EBV -positive HD occurs in those patients whose childhood environment would pre dispose them to relatively late exposure to EBV, The study population consi sted of 102 cases of mixed cellularity (MC; n = 25) or nodular sclerosing ( n = 77) HD, Samples that tested positive for either EBV-encoded RNA or late nt membrane protein or both were considered EBV-positive. Of the 102 cases, 83 completed a questionnaire regarding childhood social environment. The a ssociation with EBV-positivity was estimated by the odds ratio (OR),vith 95 % confidence intervals (CI), Twenty-two percent of the cases were EBV-posit ive. These cases were more likely to be MC (OR, 6.2; CI, 2.3-16.3) and male (OR, 3.4; CI, 1.3-9.0), History of infectious mononucleosis (IM) was not p redictive of EBV-positivity, with only 3 of 14 such patients being EBV-posi tive (P = 0.82), Contrary to our hypothesis, no association between EBV and childhood environment risk factors was identified. The association of EBV dth MC histology and male gender agrees,vith previous reports. The most int riguing finding was the dissociation between IM history and EBV-positivity, in that almost all of the cases with a history of IM were EBV-negative.