Is Epstein-Barr Virus Infection Associated With Thyroid Tumorigenesis? —A Southern China Cohort Study

Conclusion: In this study, no correlation between EBV and thyroid diseases was found in a cohort from southern China. Introduction Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is a well-known human tumor virus with a very high prevalence in the population, especially for children and youth. EBV serum (IgG) is positive in an estimated 95% of the world's population (1). EBV infection is associated with epithelial and lymphoid malignancies, including nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), gastric cancer, Hodgkin's lymphoma and Burkitt's lymphoma (2, 3). Although EBV has B-lymphocyte tropism, it can also infect T lymphocytes, myocytes, and epithelial cells in the oropharynx and stomach (4). Once EBV infects a host cell, it starts to induce a lytic or latent infection with diverse genes expressed. EBV nuclear antigens (EBNA 1, 2, 3A, 3B, 3C, and LP), the latent membrane proteins (LMP 1, 2A, and 2B) and two small noncoding RNAs (EBV-coded small RNA, EBER-1, and EBER-2) are expressed during the infection (3). These genes collaborate to induce tumorigenesis by causing systematic inflammation, suppressing the antitumoral immune system, and preventing anoikis. Whether EBV infects the thyroid gland remains controversial. To date, only a handful of reports on the association between EBV and thyroid tumorigenesis have been investigated. Stamatiou et al. (5) summarized publications regarding the EBV detection rate in thyroid cancer specimens from 2001 to 2015. The conclusion was inco...
Source: Frontiers in Oncology - Category: Cancer & Oncology Source Type: research