Incidence of Epstein-Barr virus in Syrian women with breast cancer: A tissue microarray study.

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) has been recently shown to be present in human breast cancer worldwide, which could play an important role in the initiation and progression of this cancer. In this regard, we aimed to explore the prevalence of EBV in 108 breast cancer tissues from Syrian women using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and tissue microarray (TMA) analysis. We found that EBV is present in 56 (51.85%) of breast cancers samples. Additionally, we report that the expression of LMP1 gene of EBV is associated with a cancer invasive phenotype in the majority of the cancer samples. These data imply that EBV is present in breast cancer worldwide including Syria and its presence is associated with more aggressive cancer phenotype. Thus, future investigations are needed to elucidate the exact role of EBV in breast carcinogenesis and metastasis.