Epstein-Barr Virus and Breast Cancer: Search for Antibodies to the Novel BFRF1 Protein in Sera of Breast Cancer Patients

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Abstract
Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), a widely diffused herpesvirus, is the etiologic agent of infectious mononucleosis. It has been associated with different tumors of lymphoid and epithelial origins, i.e., Burkitt's lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease, lymphoproliferative disorders that develop in immunocompromised subjects, and nasopharyngeal carcinoma (1). Furthermore, an association between breast cancer and EBV has been suggested. Some investigators reported detecting EBV DNA in breast cancer tumor cells, whereas others could not find any viral sequence. Recently, it has been shown that EBV is able to infect breast cancer-derived epithelial cells, thus adding a biologic element to this association by suggesting a route for the passage of EBV from circulating B lymphocytes to breast epithelium (2–6). However, the biologic relevance of EBV in the pathogenesis of breast cancer remains obscure, and the analysis of the status of EBV infection in breast cancer patients might be useful to shed a light on the possible role of EBV. Studies based on polymerase chain reaction and in situ hybridization do not provide information on the status of EBV infection, and the wide diffusion of the virus in the general population makes classical serology useless in elucidating the possible association between EBV infection and breast cancer.

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