Abstract
BACKGROUND—An aetiological role for Simian virus 40 (SV40) in malignant mesothelioma has been suggested from studies in the USA and the UK but results have been conflicting. A study was undertaken to look for evidence of SV40 in stored tissue samples from pleural mesotheliomas. METHODS—DNA was extracted from paraffin embedded tissue. The presence of DNA was established by amplification of a 250 bp product from the betaglobin gene. Primers PYV.F and PYV.R were used in a concentration of 50 per mol each per reaction to amplify a 172bp fragment of a conserved region of SV40 that codes for a portion of large T antigen that is common to SV40 and other polyoma viruses. RESULTS—Twelve of the 17 samples contained amplifiable betaglobin DNA. None of the samples (0/12, 95% CI 0 to 26.5%) was positive for the polyoma large T antigen. CONCLUSIONS—These results do not lend any support to the hypothesis that SV40 infection may be aetiologically relevant to the increasing incidence of mesothelioma in the UK.
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (67.5 KB).
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Carbone M., Pass H. I., Rizzo P., Marinetti M., Di Muzio M., Mew D. J., Levine A. S., Procopio A. Simian virus 40-like DNA sequences in human pleural mesothelioma. Oncogene. 1994 Jun;9(6):1781–1790. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Hubbard R. The aetiology of mesothelioma: are risk factors other than asbestos exposure important? Thorax. 1997 Jun;52(6):496–497. doi: 10.1136/thx.52.6.496. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Pepper C., Jasani B., Navabi H., Wynford-Thomas D., Gibbs A. R. Simian virus 40 large T antigen (SV40LTAg) primer specific DNA amplification in human pleural mesothelioma tissue. Thorax. 1996 Nov;51(11):1074–1076. doi: 10.1136/thx.51.11.1074. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Peto J., Hodgson J. T., Matthews F. E., Jones J. R. Continuing increase in mesothelioma mortality in Britain. Lancet. 1995 Mar 4;345(8949):535–539. doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(95)90462-x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Shah K., Nathanson N. Human exposure to SV40: review and comment. Am J Epidemiol. 1976 Jan;103(1):1–12. doi: 10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a112197. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Stenton S. C. Simian virus 40 and human malignancy. BMJ. 1998 Mar 21;316(7135):877–877. doi: 10.1136/bmj.316.7135.877. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Strickler H. D., Goedert J. J., Fleming M., Travis W. D., Williams A. E., Rabkin C. S., Daniel R. W., Shah K. V. Simian virus 40 and pleural mesothelioma in humans. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 1996 Jun;5(6):473–475. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Strickler H. D., Rosenberg P. S., Devesa S. S., Hertel J., Fraumeni J. F., Jr, Goedert J. J. Contamination of poliovirus vaccines with simian virus 40 (1955-1963) and subsequent cancer rates. JAMA. 1998 Jan 28;279(4):292–295. doi: 10.1001/jama.279.4.292. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]