ABSTRACT
In 1988, three patients undergoing evaluation for severe, chronic, active EpsteinBarr virus (EBV) infection developed peripheral T-cell lymphomas, which were subsequently shown by in situ hybridization to contain the EBV genome. The T-cells were CD4+ and had undergone clonal T-cell receptor gene rearrangements. The clinical course was fatal in each case despite aggressive chemotherapy. Each of the patients had markedly elevated immunoglobulin G (IgG) antiviral capsid antigen (>1:10,000) and anti-early antigen (EA) titers (>1:640), but low (<1:40) to zero anti-EBV nuclear antigen (EBNA) titers by the immunofluorescent technique (1).
