Viruses and Hodgkin lymphoma: No evidence of polyomavirus genomes in tumor biopsies

The epidemiology of young adult Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) suggests that delayed exposure to a common childhood pathogen may be involved in disease pathogenesis. The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is associated with a proportion of cases but cases of young adult HL in westernized countries are less frequently EBV-associated than cases in other age groups and geographical locales. This study investigated the possibility that polyomaviruses might be involved in the etiology of HL by analysing a series of 35 cases of classical HL using both specific and degenerate PCR assays for polyomavirus genomes. No positive results were obtained, indicating that it is highly unlikely that this virus family is directly involved in the pathogenesis of HL.