- Here's a most interesting news story about SV40 being
found in human lymphoma samples. Apparently the SV40 (Simian Virus 40)
was "accidently" introduced into the Polio Vaccine back in the
50's and 60's that was given to tens of millions of people worldwide...
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- Baylor College of Medicine
Contact: Lori Williams loriw@bcm.tmc.edu
713-798-4712
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- HOUSTON (March 9, 2002) - Evidence of simian virus 40
(SV40) infection found in 42 percent of non-Hodgkin lymphoma samples could
shed new light on the genesis of these blood cancers that have become more
common over the past 30 years, said Baylor College of Medicine scientists
in a report in the March 9 issue of The Lancet, a British scientific journal.
About 55,000 new cases of the disease are diagnosed annually.
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- "This is an important finding because cancers with
a viral cause offer the possibility of developing new and better ways of
treating and diagnosing and ultimately preventing the tumor," said
Dr. Janet Butel, chairman of the department of molecular virology and microbiology
at Baylor and senior author of the report.
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- "This study further demonstrates that humans can
be infected by SV40, an infection that was not suspected in the past,"
she said. SV40 usually infects rhesus monkeys. However, in the 1950s and
early 1960s, some batches of polio vaccine became accidentally infected
with the virus. The vaccine was then given to millions of people worldwide.
Because some patients with SV40-positive tumors were born after 1963 and
would not have been exposed to the contaminated vaccine, it appears that
SV40 continues to spread among humans in ways that are not yet clear. Recently,
evidence of SV40 infection has also been found in human brain tumors, tumors
of the lining of the chest and abdomen (mesothelioma), and osteosarcomas.
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- In their study, Butel and Dr. Regis Vilchez, an assistant
professor of medicine and first author on the report in The Lancet, analyzed
samples from 154 patients who had lymphomas and found 42 percent positive
for SV40 DNA, whereas many control samples were negative.
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- Dr. Adi Gazdar, a colleague at the University of Texas
Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, performed a similar study that confirmed
the presence of SV40 in samples of non-Hodgkin lymphomas. His study also
appears in the March 9 issue of The Lancet.
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- http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-03/bcom-sfi030702.php
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