Detection of Epstein-Barr virus in breast cancers with lymphoid stroma

Objective: the purpose of our work is to detect Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) in 2 types of breast cancer: medullary carcinoma and high grade invasive ductal carcinoma with lymphoid stroma. Patients and methods: we proceeded to a retrospective study of 18 medullary carcinoma and 18 high grade invasive ductal carcinoma with lymphoid stroma. The detection of the virus was carried out by immunohistochemistry with anti-LMP2 antibody and by hybridization in situ by oligonucleotides EBER1 and EBER1 LMP1 as well as hybridization in situ were positive in 5 tumors (3 medullary carcinoma and 2 high grade invasive ductal carcinoma with lymphoid stroma). Results: positivity was observed in tumor cells and neither in epithelial non tumoral ones nor in lymphoid cells. Discussion and conclusions: during numerous years, correlations between the replication of EBV and the appearance of a malignant phenotype were limited to nasopharyngeal carcinoma and to lymphoid cells. A controversy regarding the association of EBV with breast cancers has recently been reported in the literature. This cancer being very frequent, the involvement of EBV even in a small proportion of breast cancers could have important implications. Our results suggest a possible implication of EBV in these tumours but other studies are necessary.