Prostate cancer: XMRV-contaminant, not cause?

摘要

Doubts about the association between xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) and prostatic malignancy have been lent great weight by several recently published papers. The new evidence indicates that XMRV is an artifact generated during production of prostate cancer cell lines. The hypothesis that a virus might induce neoplastic transformation of prostate cells is a sound one. Viruses are known to cause cancer of the cervix and liver, and the antiviral gene RNASEL has been linked to hereditary prostate cancer. However, XMRV has been detected at widely disparate frequencies in prostate cancer populations-from 0% to 27%.