Bovine Leukaemia Virus Tax Antigen Identification in Human Lymphoma Tissue: Possibility of onco-protein Gene Ttransmission

Bovine leukaemia virus (BLV) is the cause of enzootic bovine leukaemia which belongs to retroviruses including Human T-cell leukaemia virus and simian T-lymphotropic virus. Due to this familiarity, the possibility of virus (BLV) transfer from animal production to humans may exist.

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.

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.

These findings explain the possible relation between BLV infection and the occurrence of some types of human lymphomas for the first time.