Response: Re: Detection of Epstein-Barr Virus in Invasive Breast Cancers

Extract

Brink et al. described detection of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) DNA by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in five of 24 snap-frozen breast carcinoma biopsy samples by use of primers that cover a repeat fragment and two of 24 samples with the use of a PCR specific for a single-copy gene. However, in the breast cancer samples that were positive for EBV by PCR, they did not detect either transcripts encoding EBV nuclear antigen 1 (EBNA1) or the rightward transcripts of the BamH1-A region of the EBV genome by reverse transcription–PCR (RT–PCR).

Studies on transcripts of the EBV genome in breast cancer specimens have been carried out in Dr. Griffin's laboratory. They observed BamHI-A region transcripts in a subset of breast cancer biopsy samples (with low lymphocyte infiltration) only after optimizing the PCR conditions (Griffin BE: personal communication). It is possible that the experimental conditions used by Brink et al. did not allow them to detect BamHI-A region transcripts.