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No association between human parvovirus B19 and testicular germ cell cancer

Department of Clinical Virology¹ and Department of Pathology², Huddinge University Hospital, F68, Karolinska Institutet, SE-141 86 Stockholm, Sweden
The Norwegian Cancer Registry, Oslo, Norway²
Clinical Epidemiology Unit, Department of Medicine, Karolinska Hospital, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden³

Author for correspondence: Thomas Tolfvenstam. Fax +46 8 585 879 33. e-mail thomas.tolfvenstam{at}impi.ki.se

The incidence of testicular germ cell cancer, which is the most common cancer among young male adults, is increasing. The aetiology remains unknown, although a virus has been proposed. A previous study has shown a high prevalence of human parvovirus B19 (B19) DNA in the testes of patients with testicular germ cell tumours (85%) and suggested that B19 may play a role in tumour development. To address this question of causality, seroreactivity to B19 was studied among cases (n=80) and controls (n=241) using serum samples drawn before the onset of disease, in addition to an elucidation of the frequency of virus DNA in a retrospectively collected 2-year testicular carcinoma series. No association was found between B19 seropositivity and the risk of testicular cancer (odds ratio=1·03; 95% confidence interval=0·60–1·77) nor was there any dose-response relation (P for trend=0·53). This study did, however, confirm the observation that B19 DNA can be detected in testicular carcinoma tissue, as 4 of 24 cases were found to be positive, while no B19 DNA could be detected in the control cases. It is speculated that this finding may be due to susceptibility of the carcinoma cells to B19 virus owing to high-level expression of the viral receptor glycosphingolipid (Gb4) and possible other putative cellular factors resulting in a localized persistence initiated after the development of cancer.

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