Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers and their colleagues have discovered a new retrovirus in humans that is closely related to a cancer-causing virus found in mice.
Their findings describe the first documented cases of human infection with a retrovirus that is native to rodents.
The researchers discovered the virus in patients with a rare type of prostate cancer, raising the possibility that increased susceptibility to viral infection may play a role in development of some cancers.
The patients in the study have a genetic mutation that compromised some of their natural defenses against viral infection. However, they emphasized that their findings by no means implicate the virus, dubbed XMRV, in causing prostate cancer. The virus may well have flourished as a result of the failure of the defense mechanism; and other factors such as chronic inflammation may play a more direct role in the cancer.
"This finding was a big surprise because most of these endogenous viral genomes have undergone such mutation and deletion that they are incapable of giving rise to viruses any more." said Don Ganem
The research is published in the March 30, 2006, issue of PloS Pathogens.
© 2005-2006
Walter Derzko
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