epstein-barr virus dna frequency in paraffin embedded tissues of non-hodgkin lymphoma patients from ahvaz, iran

background epstein-barr virus (ebv) is a dna virus which belongs to the herpesviridae family and in γ-herpesvirus subfamily, has been infected about 95% of the world’s population. ebv is transmitted through saliva and associated with different disease such as infectious mononucleosis, nasopharyngeal carcinoma, burkitt`s lymphoma, hodgkin and non-hodgkin`s lymphoma. the study proposed to determine the frequency of epstein-barr virus expression in histological tissue of non-hodgkin's lymphoma in ahvaz, iran. material and methods in this study 29 samples of non-hodgkin`s lymphoma were examined from ahvaz imam khomeini hospital, using nested-pcr technique on ebna-1 region in order to determine the presence of ebv genome in tumoral tissues. results among 29 cases of non-hodgkin's lymphoma, 14 (48%) cases were positive for ebv. out of 14 samples of non-hodgkin`s lymphoma, 4(28.57%) were female and 10 (71.42%) were male. a number of 8 (57%) cases belonged to the adults age group which proves association between age and ebv positive non-hodgkin`s lymphoma according to fisher`s exact test (p=0.03). however, in the current study there was no significant difference between ebv positive cases and sex subject (p=0.626).