Mohamed El-Shinawi, Hossam Taha Mohamed, Eslam A. El-Ghonaimy, Marwa Tantawy, Amal Younis, Robert J. Schneider, Mona Mostafa Mohamed

Human Cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is an endemic herpes virus that re-emerges in cancer patients enhancing oncogenic potential. Recent studies have shown that HCMV infection is associated with certain types of cancer morbidity such as glioblastoma. Although HCMV has been detected in breast cancer tissues, its role, if any, in the etiology of specific forms of breast cancer has not been investigated. In the present study we investigated the presence of HCMV infection in inflammatory breast cancer (IBC), a rapidly progressing form of breast cancer characterized by specific molecular signature. We screened for anti-CMV IgG antibodies in peripheral blood of 49 non-IBC invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) and 28 IBC patients. In addition, we screened for HCMV-DNA in postsurgical cancer and non-cancer breast tissues of non-IBC and IBC patients. We also tested whether HCMV infection can modulate the expression and activation of transcriptional factor NF-κB/p65, a hallmark of IBC. Our results reveal that IBC patients are characterized by a statistically significant increase in HCMV IgG antibody titers compared to non-IBC patients. HCMV-DNA was significantly detected in cancer tissues than in the adjacent non-carcinoma tissues of IBC and IDC, and IBC cancer tissues were significantly more infected with HCMV-DNA compared to IDC. Further, HCMV sequence analysis detected different HCMV strains in IBC patients tissues, but not in the IDC specimens. Moreover, HCMV-infected IBC cancer tissues were found to be enhanced in NF-κB/p65 signaling compared to non-IBC patients. The present results demonstrated a correlation between HCMV infection and IBC. Etiology and causality of HCMV infection with IBC now needs to be rigorously examined.