BACKGROUND: Multicentric Castleman's disease (MCD) is a rare disease, but is more frequent in AIDS patients. MCD has only been reported twice before in patients receiving immunosuppressive therapy after renal transplantation, and never in patients receiving immunosuppressive therapy without transplantation. About half of the cases of MCD are human herpesvirus 8 (HHV8) - related, in contrast to ...

Background: Pemphigus is a group of autoimmune blistering skin diseases that is related to auto antibodies against desmoglein 1 and 3. Many reports have shown that HSV1, HSV2, VZV, EBV, CMV, HHV8, and HIV are triggering agents for the activation and exacerbation of pemphigus. In this study, we decided to evaluate the frequen...

Primary effusion lymphoma (PEL) is a rare type of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma arising from a B-cell lineage characterized by the formation of malignant effusion in body cavities without evidence of a detectable tumor. The effusion contains tumor cells universally infected with human herpesvirus 8 (HHV8), which is the critical factor differentiating PEL from HHV8-unrelated PEL-like lymphoma (PEL-LL)....

The lytic origins of DNA replication for human herpesvirus 8 (HHV8), oriLyt-L and oriLyt-R, are located between open reading frames K4.2 and K5 and ORF69 and vFLIP, respectively. These lytic origins were elucidated using a transient replication assay. Although this assay is a powerful tool for identifying many herpesvirus lytic origins, it is limited in its ability to evaluate the activity of r...

Multicentric Castleman disease (MCD) is a distinct type of lymphoproliferative disorder associated with inflammatory symptoms and interleukin-6 (IL-6) dysregulation. In the context of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, MCD is associated with human herpesvirus 8 (HHV8) infection. In a prospective study of 23 HIV-infected patients with MCD, clinical symptoms of MCD were present at 45 v...

Multicentric Castleman disease (MCD) is a distinct type of lymphoproliferative disorder associated with inflammatory symptoms and interleukin-6 (IL-6) dysregulation. In the context of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, MCD is associated with human herpesvirus 8 (HHV8) infection. In a prospective study of 23 HIV-infected patients with MCD, clinical symptoms of MCD were present at 45 v...

Pathologies arising as a consequence of human herpesvirus-8 (HHV8) infections are closely associated with the autocrine activity of a HHV8 encoded IL-6 (vIL-6), which promotes proliferation of infected cells and their resistance to apoptosis. In this present report, studies show that vIL-6 may also be important in influencing the host's immunological response to secondary infections. Using peri...

There are four clinical subtypes of Kaposi sarcoma (KS): classic, endemic, epidemic and iatrogenic. The geographical prevalence of the endemic variant matches areas of human herpes virus type 8 (HHV8) seroprevalence. The iatrogenic variant, seen in immunosuppressed patients, can be associated with significant morbidity and mortality. This is the first report of KS described in the context of at...

The contribution of innate immunity to immunosurveillance of the oncogenic Human Herpes Virus 8 (HHV8) has not been studied in depth. We investigated NK cell phenotype and function in 70 HHV8-infected subjects, either asymptomatic carriers or having developed Kaposi's sarcoma (KS). Our results revealed substantial alterations of the NK cell receptor repertoire in healthy HHV8 carriers, with red...