Haematological associations of Epstein-Barr virus infection

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is one of eight human herpesviruses and is ubiquitous. Primary infection with EBV in childhood is generally silent, but often causes overt diseases such as infectious mononucleosis (IM) and lymphoproliferative disorders (LPD). The latter occurs in immunologically compromised individuals. Historically, EBV has been thought to be aetiologically linked to human malignancies such as EBV genome-positive Burkitt's lymphoma (BL) and nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Furthermore, studies using recent developments in molecular and immunological diagnostic approaches have suggested that this virus has a causative role in a spectrum of human diseases of previously unknown pathogenesis, including chronic active EBV infection syndrome (CAEBV), EBV-related haemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH), and certain disorders such as EBV genome-positive T-cell lymphoma, natural killer (NK) cell leukaemia/lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease (HD) and gastric carcinoma. This chapter reviews recent progress regarding EBV-associated diseases.