Possible Association Between Leukemia in Children and Virus-Like Agents
- William H. Murphy, PhD;
- Dolores Furtado, MS;
- Ernest Plata, MS
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
Excerpt
The conceptual and experimental problems that must be solved to etiologically implicate viruses in human cancer have been assessed in two classic reports.1,2 The natural history of leukemia in children, with its relative clinical homogeneity and its peak incidence at 31/2 years of age,3 suggests a common antecedent infectious process. Leukemia in animals4 commonly is caused by a virus; it is not unreasonable to assume that viruses also may cause some forms of leukemia in man, particularly childhood leukemia. Attempts to transmit leukemia from one human to another have failed,5 and since human subjects are not suitable for such experiments, indirect evidence must be compiled to implicate virus infection in the etiology of human leukemia. There is agreement1 that investigations should include at least the following steps: (1) isolation, preferably by cell culture, of virus-like agents from leukemic patients; (2) compilation of evidence that
Footnotes
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Read before the session on malignancy of the Fourth Multiple Discipline Research Forum during the 113th annual convention of the American Medical Association, San Francisco, June 23, 1964.
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Reprint requests to University of Michigan Medical School, East Medical Building, Ann Arbor (Dr. Murphy).
