Borrelia infection and risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma

Abstract

Reports of the presence of

Latitude gradients for lymphoid neoplasm subtypes in Australia support an association with ultraviolet radiation exposure

“…Similarly, no significant association with latitude band was observed for NHL NOS (ICD-O-3 9591, 9675, 9684, 9832; n 5 3,001; p 5 0.171); relative to <29 S, the IRRs were 1.67 (95% CI: 1.46-1.93) for [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36] S and 0.88 (95% CI: 0.74-1.05) for 37 S for NHL NOS (data not shown in figure). There were 2,418 cases of HL registered during the study period, 2,300 (95%) of which were classical HL and 118 (5%) of which were nodular lymphocyte predominant HL (NLPHL).…”

“…Bacterial infection, evidenced by antibiotic use, might also be important in CLL/SLL pathogenesis. 43 Some under-notification of CLL laboratory diagnoses has been identified in New South Wales, 44 a large Australian state falling within the central latitude band (29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36) S) in our study. Any systematic geographical variation in reporting by pathology laboratories will have influenced our findings for this neoplasm.…”

“…33 MALT lymphoma is associated with infection by Helicobacter pylori as well as autoimmune diseases including Sj€ ogren disease and Hashimoto thyroiditis and several mature B-cell lymphomas, including LPL, are associated with infection by hepatitis C virus. 33 A moderate association with Borrelia burgdorferi infection was reported for MCL by the SCALE study (n 5 148), 34 although this putative association has not been confirmed. A personal history of infection, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases has been associated with an increased risk of PCM.…”

Re: Risk of malignancy associated with Lyme disease: Still up in the air

“…An important aspect to keep in mind when interpreting our results is that our testing methods are virtually the same as the Scandinavian case-control study which reported a statistically significant association between anti-Borrelia seropositivity and the risk of developing mantle cell lymphoma. 3 Added advantages in our study include the prospective study design, which eliminates recall bias, and the ability to evaluate the risk of all malignancies. We carried out a thorough analysis and interpreted our results with caution.…”

“…1,2 Importantly, the recent Scandinavian case-control study, which observed a statistically significant association between anti-Borrelia seropositivity and risk of mantle cell lymphoma used a similar in-house ELISA test 3 with the same estimated sensitivity. On a statistical note, low sensitivity of a test generally leads to nondifferential misclassification leading to bias toward the null value.…”