AUTHOR=Wang Tao , Xia Changsheng , Deng Yanni , Xu Liangbi , Jiang Yanping 

TITLE=Case Report: From Kaposi’s sarcoma to primary effusive lymphoma

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Medicine

VOLUME=Volume 12 - 2025

YEAR=2025

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/medicine/articles/10.3389/fmed.2025.1591462

DOI=10.3389/fmed.2025.1591462

ISSN=2296-858X

ABSTRACT=Primary effusion lymphoma (PEL) is a rare B-cell lymphoma with an extremely poor prognosis that is associated with long-term persistent latent infection with Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) and Epstein–Barr virus (EBV). However, studies on the correlation between KSHV genotype and PEL development in elderly patients are still lacking. We present the first global case of non-HIV, non-effusive, difficult-to-diagnose PEL with disseminated Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS) in an elderly patient of Bouyei nationality, dynamically demonstrating that KSHV and EBV co-infection promote tumorigenesis. Phylogenetic analysis based on the Open Coding Framework (ORF)-K1 gene indicated that five samples from the patient’s blood (mtl A), saliva (mtl B), descending colon (mtl C), skin (mtl D), and gastric mucosa (mtl E) may belong to a new subtype, Cnew. KSHV genotypes appear to show a pattern of traceability consistent with the human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup tree.