Prevalence of human endogenous retroviral element associates with Hodgkin's lymphoma incidence rates()

Human endogenous retrovirus-H (HERV-H) is implicated in leukaemias and lymphomas, but the precise molecular mechanism underlying HERV-mediated carcinogenesis remains unknown. We determined the prevalence of HERV-H in a cross-section of the Singapore population and explored the relationship between HERV-H positivity and incidence rates for Hodgkin's lymphoma in three major ethnic groups of Singapore. We observed that Malays were 1.11 times likely (95% CI=1.05–1.17; P<0.01), and Indians 1.12 times likely (95% CI=1.07–1.18; P<0.01) to be HERV-H positive when compared to Chinese. Interestingly, the incidence rates of Hodgkin's lymphoma for the three races positively correlated to the respective prevalence rate for HERV-H positivity (r=0.9921 for male; r=0.9801 for female), suggesting that viral inheritance in human may predispose certain racial origin unfavourably to malignancy.