The association between epstein‐barr virus and chinese hodgkin's disease

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Abstract
Epstein‐Barr virus (EBV) can be detected in Hodgkin and Reed‐Sternberg (HRS) cells in about one‐half of cases of Hodgkin's disease (HD) in Western countries. To determine whether EBV is also associated with HD in a developing country such as China, we studied paraffin sections from 28 Chinese cases of HD for expression of latent membrane protein‐1 (LMP‐1) and EBV‐encoded small RNA (EBER‐I), using immuno‐histology and RNA/RNA in situ hybridization respectively. The cases were selected from a large series of Chinese lymphomas following histological and immunophenotypical revision. EBV gene expression was found in HRS cells in 17/28 cases, and was related to histological sub‐type, being present in 10/11 of mixed cellularity, 6/14 nodular sclerosis, 0/1 lymphocytic predominance, 0/1 lymphocytic depletion, and 1/1 unclassified HD. The 2 methods for detecting EBV gene expression gave similar results, except in one case of nodular sclerosis, in which HRS cells were negative for EBER‐1, but weakly positive for LMP‐1. In 5/12 cases with EBER‐negative HRS cells, rare small or medium‐sized lymphocytes expressed EBER‐1 but not LMP‐1. These results suggest that (i) Chinese HD is frequently associated with EBV; (ii) the proportional frequency and sub‐type distribution of EBV‐positive HD are similar in China and in the West; (iii) both LMP‐1 immunohistology and EBER in situ hybridization reliably detect EBV in HRS cells in routine biopsies, but the former is simpler and less resource‐consuming to perform.