bovine leukaemia virus tax antigen identification in human lymphoma tissue: possibility of onco-protein gene transmission

Background: bovine leukaemia virus (blv) is the cause of enzootic bovine leukosis (ebl) which belongs to retroviruses including human t-cell leukaemia virus and simian t-lymphotropic virus. due to this familiarity, the possibility of blv transfer from animal production to humans may exist. materials and methods: in the present study, formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded and fresh human lymphomas tissues were used for detecting the blv tax genome and blv tax expression using nested-pcr and rt-nested-pcr. results: nested-pcr evaluation showed that 9 of 41 samples contained tax region of blv genome, of which eight samples belonged to high grade diffuse large cell lymphoma (b-cell type). also, the results of rt-nested-pcr showed the blv tax expression in 2 of 5 high grade diffuse large cell lymphoma (b-cell type) samples. conclusion: these findings explain the possible relation between blv infection and the occurrence of some types of human lymphomas for the first time