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Qualitative and quantitative analysis of human herpesviruses in chronic and acute B cell lymphocytic leukemia and in multiple myeloma

Leukemia volume 17, pages 185–195 (2003)Cite this article

Abstract

Real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) was used to quantify viral loads of human herpesviruses (HHVs) at diagnosis in 61 samples of malignant B cells: 21 chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL), 29 acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL) and 11 multiple myeloma (MM); control samples were blasts from 16 acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and 24 blood or bone marrow samples from healthy donors. The majority of samples from healthy donors and patients (B-ALL, B-CLL or AML, but not MM) was positive for EBV and contained <100 ebv copies/100 ng dna. ebv loads were occasionally high (>500 copies/100 ng DNA) in B-ALL (2/16) and in B-CLL (2/21) samples. The fractions of samples positive for HHV-8 and HHV-6A, less than 10% for MM patients, were high for adults with B-ALL (18.8% HHV-8+, 43.8% HHV-6A+) or B-CLL (28.6% HHV-8+, 52.4% HHV-6A+). B-ALL, B-CLL and MM samples were rarely positive for HHV-6B and HHV-7. Lastly, 75% of B-ALL samples were positive for CMV, and CMV loads were significantly higher in B-ALL samples than in MM, B-CLL or AML samples. We also used PCR with consensus-degenerate hybrid oligonucleotide primers (CODEHOP) to look for novel HHVs in B cell samples: no sequence indicative of a new HHV was detected. Altogether, the data indicate that the presence of multiple HHVs, including EBV and CMV at high loads, is not rare in B-ALL and B-CLL cell samples. Future prospective studies should determine whether patients with high EBV/CMV loads at diagnosis in tumor samples face a higher risk of delayed hematological recovery, virus-related complications or relapse.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Mrs Danielle Pineau and Mr Yves Garreau for storing and sorting patient samples, to Mr Thomas A Paul and Mrs Rufina N Casey for technical help and advice, and to our colleagues from the Department of Hematology of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Nantes, France and the Pediatric Department of the District Hospital of Faro, Portugal, for providing blood and BM samples. SH was supported by a grant from NATO. RJG was supported by NIH training grant No. T2ES07052E.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    S Hermouet, C A Sutton, R J Greenblatt, A M Neves & J W Casey

  2. INSERM U463, Institut de Biologie, Nantes, France

    S Hermouet, I Corre & R Bataille

  3. Laboratoire d'Hématologie, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire, Nantes, France

    S Hermouet, R Garand & R Bataille

  4. Department of Pathobiology, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    T M Rose

  5. Department of Immunology and Genetics, College of Medical Sciences, New University, Lisbon, Portugal

    A M Neves

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Hermouet, S., Sutton, C., Rose, T. et al. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of human herpesviruses in chronic and acute B cell lymphocytic leukemia and in multiple myeloma. Leukemia 17, 185–195 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.leu.2402748

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