Fatal non-transplant-related epstein-barr virus-associated atypical lymphoid proliferations in infants and children: a clinicopathologic study.

Most Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-related infections in infants and children are asymptomatic or self-limited mild viral illnesses, but rare cases of a rapidly fatal disorder have been described. Failure of the cellular response to control EBV-related lymphoid proliferation leads to severe disease with multiple complications, including a fatal outcome or development of an EBV-driven, clonal lymphoid neoplasm. In this report we characterize 3 cases of fatal, nontransplant, or immunodeficiency-related EBV infection in very young children with immunophenotypic and molecular evidence of B/natural killer (NK)-T cell clonal expansion.