Potential relationship between BK virus and renal cell carcinoma

Abstract

The objective of the present study was to investigate the potential association between the presence of BK virus (BKV) DNA and mRNA and renal cell carcinoma and bladder transitional cell carcinoma. The formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded tissue samples were obtained from 50 cancer patients with renal cell carcinoma, 40 cancer patients with bladder transitional cell carcinoma, 45 control patients with the benign renal pathology, and from another 25 control patients with benign bladder pathology. The samples were subjected to nested PCR for detection of BKV DNA and real-time reverse transcription PCR (real-time RT-PCR) for determining mRNA levels of BKV. The results of the nested PCR indicated that 23 (14.3%) of 160 samples were positive for BKV DNA. The relationship between the cancer and the presence of BKV DNA was significant (P < 0.05). The BKV DNA positivity was significantly associated with the histological diagnosis of renal cell carcinoma (P = 0.03), but not with that of bladder transitional cell carcinoma. The results of real-time RT-PCR showed that the mRNA of BKV VP1 was present in 69.5% of the BKV DNA positive samples. The levels of BKV mRNA were significantly higher in the renal cell cancer samples than in the control samples (P < 0.05). The results of the present study confirm the association between BKV and renal cell cancer. The findings also indicated that the presence of BKV DNA resulted in a fivefold increase in the risk of development of renal cell carcinoma.

BK Polyomavirus Genomic Integration and Large T Antigen Expression: Evolving Paradigms in Human Oncogenesis

“…Oncogenesis in this patient population is multifactorial and includes virus‐induced neoplastic transformation . The role of BK virus in carcinogenesis in immunocompromised patients has been recognized recently ; however, pathophysiological events leading to BK virus–induced tumor growth remain poorly understood .…”

No Evidence of Human Polyomavirus 9, WU and KI DNA in Kidney and Urinary Bladder Tumour Tissue Samples

“…This suggestion was strengthened by in vitro and animal experiments with BKPyV that proved its transforming ability as reviewed previously [1,3,6]. After the primary infection, BKPyV establishes a lifelong persistent infection in the urinary tract and renal cells [2], hence there exist large number of studies of urinary tract neoplasia and cancers [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15]. DNA, RNA or even proteins of the BK virus have been detected in different human tumours (brain, neuroblastoma, osteosarcoma, bladder, kidney, adrenal, prostate, genital, colon), but the role of BKPyV in human cancers is still controversial [1,4,6,16,17,18,19].…”

Polyomavirus en hospederos inmunocomprometidos: situación en Sudamérica

“…De igual manera, se ha determinado un mayor riesgo de desarrollar carcinoma de células renales en pacientes con presencia de ADN de BKPyV. Sin em-bargo, no se ha establecido esta asociación en la génesis del carcinoma de células transicionales de vejiga, ya que algunos estudios no muestran grandes diferencias en la prevalencia de BKPyV al comparar casos de carcinoma de células transicionales (6,2%) y controles (3,6%), mientras que otros apoyan la asociación basándose en una mayor seroprevalencia en el grupo de casos o en la presencia de células decoy 25,[29][30][31] .…”