EBV is usually transmitted orally, and it may cause infectious mononucleosis in adolescents and young adults. EBV was also found in several malignancies such as Hodgkin’s lymphoma (or Hodgkin’s disease) and carcinomas, as well as in some immunodepressed pathologies like AIDS. This oncovirus is also responsible for a lymphoma-resembling disease in New World primates.

Despite the evidence of EBV’s contribution to the etiology of Hodgkin’s disease, the real causes of malignancy are still unclear. Moreover, the long-term risk of this and other cancers following the occurrence of infectious mononucleosis remains poorly characterized.

In a large-scale cancer study among Danish and Swedish patients, a team of Scandinavian researchers came to the conclusion that there is a substantial increase in the risk of Hodgkin’s disease for up to two decades after the diagnosis of infectious mononucleosis (J. Natl. Cancer Inst. 2000, 92, 1522–1528). In addition, the study showed that following about of infectious mononucleosis, skin cancers are the only malignancies that occur with increased frequency. In contrast, the risk of lung cancer is significantly reduced.

Although this is the largest population-based investigation ever reported on EBV-associated cancers, statistical analysis is limited by the choice of Scandinavian people only. For more general conclusions, it will be necessary to study the incidence of cancerous tumors after bouts of infectious mononucleosis in populations with different socioeconomic factors and/or from other geographical regions.