Epstein–Barr virus strains and variations: Geographic or disease‐specific variants?

Abstract

The Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) is associated with the development of several diseases, including infectious mononucleosis (IM), Burkitt's Lymphoma (BL), Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma, and other neoplasias. The publication of EBV genome 1984 led to several studies regarding the identification of different viral strains. Currently, EBV is divided into EBV type 1 (B95-8 strain) and EBV type 2 (AG876 strain), also known as type A and type B, which have been distinguished based upon genetic differences in the Epstein-Barr nuclear antigens (EBNAs) sequence. Several other EBV strains have been described in the past 10 years considering variations on EBV genome, and many have attempted to clarify if these variations are ethnic or geographically correlated, or if they are disease related. Indeed, there is an increasing interest to describe possible specific disease associations, with emphasis on different malignancies. These studies aim to clarify if these variations are ethnic or geographically correlated, or if they are disease related, thus being important to characterize the epidemiologic genetic distribution of EBV strains on our population. Here, we review the current knowledge on the different EBV strains and variants and its association with different diseases. J. Med. Virol. 89:373-387, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A novel recombinant variant of latent membrane protein 1 from Epstein Barr virus in Argentina denotes phylogeographical association

“…In accordance with the low incidence of XhoI-loss observed in our series, a recent review by Neves et al highlights that even though associated to NPC development, this polymorphism could also be a geographic or race associated variation in South Asian population [23]. Whichever the case, XhoI-loss seems not be related to lymphomagenesis in South America nor a predominant polymorphism in our region.…”

“…Regarding LMP1 gene, a classification system to define its sequence variation, based on signature polymorphisms in the C-ter region was introduced by Edwards et al in the year 1999 (21) and is still the most frequently used system until today [23]. But, since geographical restrictions have been proposed for LMP1 variants and that it is plausible that a portion of any given gene may not reflect its total degree of variation, we assessed its variability, molecular evolution, disease and geographic association in 65 full-length LMP1 sequences from pediatric patients with benign or malignant EBV diseases and healthy carriers.…”

“…In this way this work contributes to enlarge our present knowledge on structural variants or mutations from a still underrepresented geographic location [17,20,23], South America, which displays a characteristic epidemiology concerning EBV related diseases.…”

“…Under this scheme, the variants are named according to the geographic region where they were first isolated: Alaskan, China 1, China 2, China 3, Mediterranean+ (Med+), Med−, and North Carolina (NC) (21). Since only few studies comprised LMP1 entire gene sequence, it is unknown whether this classification scheme could still be applicable or new approaches need to be developed to discuss the geographical distribution and/or the pathogenic role of LMP1 [22,23]. …”

Distribution of the Epstein‐Barr virus in the normal stomach and gastric lesions in Thai population

“…A test for EBV strain identification was carried out by PCR using primers (forward 5′‐GAG AAG GGG AGC GTG TGT TGT‐3′ and reverse 5′‐GCT CGT TTT TGA CGT CGG C‐3′) spanning the EBNA3C , as previously published . The PCR mixtures contained 10 × PCR buffer, deoxynucleotide triphosphates (0.2 mM), forward and reverse primers (0.4 μM each), 1 U of HotStarTaq, and 50 ng of template DNA.…”