detection and genotyping of epstein-bar virus among paraffin embedded tissues of hodgkin and non-hodgkin's lymphoma patients in ahvaz, iran

Epstein-barr virus (ebv) is a dna virus which belongs to the herpesviridae family, has been infected with 90% of the world’s population. ebv is transmitted through saliva and associated with different diseases such as infectious mononucleosis, nasopharyngeal carcinoma, burkitt`s lymphoma, hodgkin and non-hodgkin`s lymphoma. this study was designed to determine the frequency of ebv dna and genotyping of this virus in histological tissues of hodgkin and non-hodgkin's lymphoma in ahvaz, iran. in this study, 12 samples of hodgkin and 29 samples of non-hodgkin`s lymphoma were examined from ahvaz imam khomeini hospital. after deparaffinization and dna extraction, nested-pcr technique was carried out on epstein-barr nuclear antigen 1 (ebna-1) and epstein-barr nuclear antigen 3c (ebna-3c) regions in order to detect ebv genome and genotype in tumoral tissues. among 12 cases of hodgkin`s lymphoma, 3 (25%) cases and among 29 cases of non-hodgkin's lymphoma, 14 (48%) cases were positive for ebv. all 3 ebv positive cases of hodgkin`s lymphoma and a number of 8 (57%) cases of non-hodgkin`s lymphoma belonged to the adolescence age group which proves an association between age and ebv positive in hodgkin and non-hodgkin`s lymphoma according to fisher`s exact test (p=0.03). all ebv positive cases in hodgkin and non-hodgkin`s lymphoma were ebv-1. the results of this study revealed that ebv played a possible important role in hodgkin and non-hodgkin`s lymphoma especially in adults. also, the main genotype of virus in the current study was ebv-1.