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History of infections and vaccinations and risk of lymphoid neoplasms: does influenza immunization reduce the risk?

Leukemia volume 21, pages 2075–2079 (2007)Cite this article

Lymphoid neoplasms (LN) are malignancies of lymphocytes, the primary effectors of the immune system. LN are a heterogeneous group including non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL), multiple myeloma (MM) and chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) and comprises numerous histological subtypes integrated in the third edition of the WHO International Classification in Oncology since 2001. Altogether, for the year 2000, the annual number of incident cases of LN in France was estimated to be over 17 000 and the number of deaths to almost 9000. The incidence of NHL increased more than 3% yearly during the last two decades (1978–2000). Changes in diagnosis and registration practices over time and emergence of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) contributed to the rise of NHL but are insufficient to explain entirely observed trends. The aetiology of LN is largely unknown, especially for NHL, although various risk factors explain a small proportion of the incident cases worldwide. The present study has been conducted to investigate the potential relationship between LN and infections, environmental and occupational exposures and family history. This paper focuses on questions related to infections and immunizations, prevalence of which is likely to have substantially changed over time.

Several studies have shown that selected aspects of a history of infection and vaccination may be related to the risk of LN.1, 2, 3, 4, 5 The results are heterogeneous, varying with the type of infectious disease considered and with the histologic analysis of NHL as a whole or by subtype. A history of infectious mononucleosis was shown to be positively associated with NHL,1, 2 but negatively associated with follicular lymphoma (FL) and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLCL), in the only histologic subtype analysis, which was conducted by Holly et al.4 A medical history of herpes (labial) or hepatitis has been reported to be negatively related to NHL considered by subtype (DLCL and FL), but analyses conducted on all NHL generated non-significant results or a positive association.2, 3 Few results for bacterial infections are available: scarlet fever, pneumonia, pyelonephritis, tuberculosis and chronic infection have been reported to constitute an NHL risk.1, 2, 3, 5 However, those findings were based on single-studies, or non-significant associations, or were not confirmed by histologic subtype analysis.4 Foreign travel does not seem to be associated with NHL.4 The results for a history of malaria are contradictory.3, 5

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grants from the Association pour la Recherche contre le Cancer, the Fondation de France, and AFSSET and received a gift from Faberge employees. We are grateful to Sandra Leguyader-Peyrou, Marie-Astrid Caillet, Satya Garnier-Haoussine, Virginie Duchenet, Véronique Chaigneau, Anne-Laure Demarty, Dominique Gillet and Magali Viaud who contributed to the interviews and to Martine Valdes, Christine Henry, Nathalie Jourdan-Da Silva and Dominique Ridondelli for technical assistance. We also thank the heads of department who helped us to include their patients as controls: Profs. Vital, Durandeau, Le Guillou at Bordeaux, Lefevre and Le Goff at Brest, Vielpeau and Marcelli at Caen, Migaux , Duquesnois, Mazeman at Lille, Passuti and Maugars at Nantes, Mansat and Fournier at Toulouse, and to Isabelle Soubeyran who helped the revision of the diagnoses with the staff of the Haematological malignancies registry of Gironde who helped for classification and coding. We are grateful to Andrew Mullarky for his skillful revision of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. INSERM, U754, Villejuif, France

    A Monnereau, L Orsi, D Hemon & J Clavel

  2. Université Paris-Sud, UMR-S754, IFR69, Villejuif, France

    A Monnereau, L Orsi, D Hemon & J Clavel

  3. Institut Bergonié, Centre de Lutte Contre le Cancer, Bordeaux, France

    A Monnereau & P Soubeyran

  4. Laboratoire d’hématologie, Hôpital Côte de Nacre, Caen, France

    X Troussard & M Leporrier

  5. Département d’hématologie, Hôpital Morvan, Brest, France

    C Berthou

  6. Département d’hématologie, Hôpital Avicenne, Bobigny, France

    P Fenaux

  7. Service des maladies du sang, Hôpital du Haut-Lévêque, Pessac, France

    G Marit

  8. Département d’hématologie, Hôpital Purpan, Toulouse, France

    F Huguet

  9. Département d’hématologie, Hôtel Dieu, Nantes, France

    N Milpied

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  1. A Monnereau
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Correspondence to A Monnereau.

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Monnereau, A., Orsi, L., Troussard, X. et al. History of infections and vaccinations and risk of lymphoid neoplasms: does influenza immunization reduce the risk?. Leukemia 21, 2075–2079 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.leu.2404738

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