Infectious mononucleosis, immune genotypes, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL): an InterLymph Consortium study.

Purpose: We explored the interaction between non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), infectious mononucleosis (IM) history, and immune-related genotypes in a pooled case-control analysis.

Methods: A total of 7,926 NHL patients and 10,018 controls from 12 case-control studies were included. Studies were conducted during various time periods between 1988 and 2008, and participants were 17-96 years of age at the time of ascertainment/recruitment. Self-reported IM history and immune response genotypes were provided by the InterLymph Data Coordinating Center at Mayo Clinic. Odds ratios (OR) were estimated using multivariate logistic regression, and interactions were estimated using the empirical Bayes method. P was used to account for multiple comparisons.

Results: There was evidence of an interaction effect between IM history and two variants on T-cell lymphoma (TCL) risk: rs1143627 in interleukin-1B (IL1B) (p = 0.04, OR = 0.09, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.01, 0.87) and rs1800797 in interleukin-6 (IL6) (p = 0.03, OR = 0.08, 95% CI 0.01, 0.80). Neither interaction effect withstood adjustment for multiple comparisons. There were no statistically significant interactions between immune response genotypes and IM on other NHL subtypes.

Conclusions: Genetic risk variants in IL1B and IL6 may affect the association between IM and TCL, possibly by influencing T-cell activation, growth, and differentiation in the presence of IM, thereby decreasing risk of immune cell proliferation.