Prevalence of Human Herpesvirus 8 Infection Before the Acquired Immunodeficiency Disease Syndrome-Related Epidemic of Kaposi's Sarcoma in East Africa

The etiologic role of the recently discovered Kaposi's sarcoma (KS)-associated herpesvirus (KSHV), also called human herpesvirus 8 (HHV8), in the development of all types of KS is now generally accepted (1,2). Long before the epidemic of the acquired immunodeficiency disease syndrome (AIDS) began, East Africa was known as a high-risk area for KS. For example, during the quinquennium 1964 through 1968, the annual incidence of KS in Uganda was 14.6 per million in males, representing approximately 4.6% of the pathologically examined tumors (3). By comparison, Wabinga et al. (4) observed that the annual incidence of KS in Uganda in 1993 was approximately 300 per million in males, representing 48.6% of all cancers diagnosed histologically or clinically among males at Makarere University Hospital in Uganda. To see whether the increase in the incidence of KS was associated with an increase in KSHV/HHV8 seroprevalence, we tested samples of sera obtained from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), Lyon, France. These serum samples had been collected in the early 1970s in the framework of the Ugandan prospective Burkitt's lymphoma study (5). This allowed us to assess the KSHV/HHV8 seroprevalence in the rural populations of the West Nile District in Uganda and the North Mara District in Tanzania during the period 1972 through 1975, i.e., the period prior to the onset of the AIDS-related epidemic of KS.