Severe Chronic Active Epstein-Barr Virus Infection Presenting as Fever of Unknown Origin / 감염과화학요법

ABSTRACT

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is one of eight human herpesvirus. Primary infection with EBV in childhood is generally asymptomatic or mild, however, often causes overt diseases such as infectious mononucleosis (IM) and lymphoproliferative disorder (LPD), the latter occursing in immunologically compromised individuals. Historically, EBV has been considered to be etiologically linked to human malignancies such as EBV genome positive Burkitt's lymphoma and nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Recently, however, another category of EBV-related disease, "chronic active EBV infection", has been made to describe persons without a clearly defined underlying disease. We report 4 cases of patients, presented with episodic fever of unknown origin (FUO), who were diagnosed as severe chronic active EBV infection. A combined application of serology for EBV and in-situ hybridization established the diagnosis of the EBV infection.