Prevalence of selected viruses among leukaemia pationts in Mosul city

All forms of cancer cause about 12% of deaths across the world. Leukaemia has an incidence of 1 in 100,000 people and therefore contributes to 25 percent of malignancies in children. Leukaemia is a technical term that denotes White Blood Cell (WBC) malignancy. The White Blood Cells are part of the formed components of the blood and they are mainly responsible for immunity and protection of the body. Leukaemia is known to have strong association with certain viruses. Some of them include Human T-lymphotropic virus 1 (HTLV), Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV), Cytomegalovirus (CMV) and Hepatitis viruses. It is possible for the mentioned viruses to remain latent in host cells and then become active again when the immune system if a host becomes impaired. The aim of this thesis is to detect HTLV in cancer patients and to determine the prevalence of EBV virus and Hepatitis virus. This study was carried out at the Mosul General Hospital. Information was obtained from 96 patients that have already been diagnosed with Leukaemia using questionnaires. Of these patients, 82 were positive for Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), representing 85.41% of patients. Human T-lymphotropic Virus 1 (HTLV 1) was positive in 9 patients, representing 9.4% of the population. Of those who were EBV positive, 38 (39.5%) were male and 44 (45.5%) were female, while for HTLV-1 positive patients, 3 (3.1%) were male and 6 (6.2%) were female. The fact that 85.41% of patients with leukemia were positive for EBV and 9.4% were positive for HTLV-1 indicates a strong association between leukemia and EBV virus. The study therefore recommends that routine screening of widespread viruses especially the EBV and HTLV-1 should be carried out in all patients diagnosed with Leukaemia and appropriate treatments should be initiated.