Abstract
Epidemiological evidence suggests that childhood leukaemia, and possibly common acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in particular, may have an infectious aetiology. Smith (1997 J Immunother: 89–100) recently suggested that the critical infectious event occurs during pregnancy, and identified the polyoma virus JC as a candidate agent. In the present study we investigated whether genomes from the JC virus, and closely related BK virus, could be detected in leukaemic cells. No positive results were obtained suggesting that JC virus is unlikely to play a direct role in leukaemogenesis.
Similar content being viewed by others
Article PDF
Change history
16 November 2011
This paper was modified 12 months after initial publication to switch to Creative Commons licence terms, as noted at publication
References
Greaves, MF (1997) Aetiology of acute leukaemia. Lancet 349: 344–349.
Greaves, MF & Alexander, FE (1993) An infectious etiology for common acute lymphoblastic leukemia in childhood. Leukemia 7: 349–360.
Kinlen, LJ (1995) Epidemiological evidence for an infective basis in childhood leukaemia. Br J Cancer 71: 1–5.
Kinlen, LJ, Clarke, K & Hudson, C (1990) Evidence from population mixing in British New Towns 1946–1985 of an infective basis for childhood leukaemia. Lancet 336: 577–582.
Perrons, CJ, Fox, JD, Lucas, SB, Brink, NS, Tedder, RS & Miller, RF (1996) Detection of polyomaviral DNA in clinical-samples from immunocompromised patients: correlation with clinical disease. J Infect 32: 205–209.
Saiki, RK, Gelfand, DH, Stoffel, S, Scharf, SJ, Higuchi, R, Horn, GT, Mullis, KB & Erlich, HA (1988) Primer-directed enzymatic amplification of DNA with a thermostable DNA polymerase. Science 239: 487–491.
Smith, M (1997) Consideration on a possible viral etiology for B-precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia of childhood. J Immunother 20: 89–100.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
From twelve months after its original publication, this work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
About this article
Cite this article
MacKenzie, J., Perry, J., Ford, A. et al. JC and BK virus sequences are not detectable in leukaemic samples from children with common acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. Br J Cancer 81, 898–899 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.bjc.6690783
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.bjc.6690783
Keywords
This article is cited by
-
Infection, immune responses and the aetiology of childhood leukaemia
Nature Reviews Cancer (2006)
-
Gene expression analysis reveals a strong signature of an interferon-induced pathway in childhood lymphoblastic leukemia as well as in breast and ovarian cancer
Oncogene (2005)
-
Oncogenic transformation by BK virus and association with human tumors
Oncogene (2003)
-
Screening for herpesvirus genomes in common acute lymphoblastic leukemia
Leukemia (2001)
