Link between stomach cancer and Epstein-Barr virus revealed
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It can both initiate a tumor and influence its progression.
A few years ago, scientists found that infection of the gastrointestinal tract with the bacterium Helicobacter pylori significantly increases the risk of developing chronic gastritis. And chronic gastritis, in turn, can cause stomach cancer.
However, Helicobacter pylori is not the only one. Russian scientists from Tomsk conducted a study to understand what role the Epstein-Barr virus plays in the development of malignant neoplasms of the stomach, the carriers of which are approximately 97% of the inhabitants of the Earth over 40 years old. And they came to interesting conclusions.
Oncovirologists and biologists from the Tomsk National Research Medical Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences presented the results of their work during the XV Annual All-Russian Congress on Infectious Diseases named after Academician V.I. Pokrovsky. As they note, there is worldwide evidence that in all gastric carcinomas, the presence of Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) in tumor tissues occurs in 15–20% of cases. And this applies to all continents of the planet.
EBV has also been associated with a number of other cancers, most notably lymphomas (cancer of the blood). The association with gastric cancer has only recently been established. And although the main factor in the development of this malignant tumor is still Helicobacter, EBV is blamed for triggering genetic oncogenic mutations, as well as suppressing the immune system, which allows carcinogenesis to develop.
Could this virus be a marker for stomach cancer? According to Tomsk researchers, this type of cancer is difficult to treat, so the search for markers that would predict the outcome of patients is very important. During the study, they analyzed the pathological materials of 43 patients aged 31–70 years with stage 4 gastric cancer. The surgical material of the stomach tissue, tumor tissue of the stomach and metastases in the lymph nodes were studied. “The results were very surprising,” scientists from Tomsk share. – In the unchanged tissue of the stomach, the virus was found in 9% of the samples. But in the tumor tissue, the virus was found in 72% of cases (in 31 patients). Metastases in tissues – in 51.2%. In 12 patients, EBV was found in all tissues.”
Further more. It turned out that if the virus is detected in healthy stomach tissue, this is a predictor of a severe course of the disease with a poor prognosis, even if progression is not observed in the patient at the moment. Survival in those 12 patients was only 15%. Whereas those who did not find EBV in healthy stomach tissue survived in 80% of cases.
Scientists make a sensational conclusion: EBV-associated gastric cancer is a separate subtype of tumor of the gastrointestinal tract. The virus can be found not only in tumor tissue, but also in healthy tissue, and in this case, its presence can initiate the process of oncogenesis, and also affect the progression process. Therefore, further studies are required to identify potential targets for personalized treatment of this pathology.
…VEB was discovered in 1964 by the English virologist Mark Epstein in collaboration with his assistant Yvonne Barr. It belongs to the herpes family (another name is herpes type 4). By the age of 40, up to 97% of adults become its carriers. Someone is lucky, and such a “neighborhood” will go unnoticed, while for others it can turn into a serious illness.
A vaccine against the Epstein-Barr virus has not yet been invented; there isn’t really much to treat him with. Most often, the virus causes mononucleosis. With it, the body temperature rises sharply, the throat hurts, the lymph nodes, liver, spleen increase, and the composition of the blood changes. Often, EBV leads to angina. The cause of chronic fatigue syndrome is even less often diagnosed – it is also often caused by the Epstein-Barr virus. And EBV can lead to the development of hematitis and some malignant diseases.
The virus is transmitted with any human fluids, as well as by airborne droplets. As a result, a person becomes a virus carrier for the rest of his life – herpes viruses hide in nervous tissues and, under certain circumstances, become locomotives for the development of diseases.
Alas, there is no etiotropic therapy against EBV in the world.
Newspaper headline:
Step from virus to cancer
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