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. 2021 Apr 20:13:100252.
doi: 10.1016/j.onehlt.2021.100252. eCollection 2021 Dec.

Bovine leukemia viral DNA found on human breast tissue is genetically related to the cattle virus

Affiliations

Bovine leukemia viral DNA found on human breast tissue is genetically related to the cattle virus

Raíssa Canova et al. One Health. .

Abstract

Bovine leukemia virus (BLV) infection is widespread in cattle and associated with B cell lymphoma. In a previous study we demonstrated that bovine leukemia viral DNA was detected in human breast tissues and significantly associated with breast cancer. Our current study aimed to determine whether BLV DNA found in humans and cattle at the same geographical region were genetically related. DNA was extracted from the breast tissue of healthy (n = 32) or cancerous women patients (n = 27) and from the blood (n = 30) of cattle naturally infected with BLV, followed by PCR-amplification and partial nucleotide sequencing of the BLV env gene. We found that the nucleotide sequence identity between BLV env gene fragments obtained from human breast tissue and cattle blood ranged from 97.8 to 99.7% and grouped into genotype 1. Thus, our results further support the hypothesis that this virus might cause a zoonotic infection.

Keywords: Bovine leukemia viral DNA; Cattle; Human; Human breast tissue; Zoonosis.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Frequency of detection of different BLV provirus genes in women breast tissue.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Phylogenetic analysis of the partial env gene nucleotide sequences (446 bp) from BLV DNA obtained in Brazil (formula image) and other countries (respective flags). Phylogenetic tree was generated using the Maximum Likelihood method. The ten known major genotypes are labeled G1 to G10. Our human and cattle sequences are indicated with a purple rhombus and blue circles, respectively. The flags represent the countries where the samples were analyzed and reported: Uruguai (formula image), Paraguai (formula image), South Korea (formula image), Japan (formula image), United States of America (formula image), Peru (formula image), Argentina (formula image), Croatia (formula image), Ukraine (formula image), Bolivia (formula image), Costa Rica (formula image), Chile (formula image), Russia (formula image), Belarus (formula image), Belgium (formula image), Poland (formula image) and Myanmar (formula image).The other flags correspond to Brazilian states: Rio Grande do Sul (formula image), Paraná (formula image), Minas Gerais (formula image), São Paulo (formula image) and Mato Grosso do Sul (formula image). (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Deduced amino acid analysis of the partial env gene of BLV isolates. The major epitope regions and neutralizing domains (ND) are shown.

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