A Hodgkin's Clue?

Doctors still do not know whether Hodgkin's disease is a tumor caused by infection or a true cancer resulting from changes in the reproductive mechanism of cells in the lymphatic system. And because of their inability to decide between these two theories, they grasp at every straw that may offer a clue to the cause of the disease. Such a clue has been reported by the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston: two medical students who lived in the same room, but at different times, developed Hodgkin's disease within a few months, or possibly weeks. Could that mean that Hodgkin's is infectious?

The fortunate fact that Hodgkin's is a relatively rare disease (3,300 deaths a year in the U.S.) makes it tough for epidemiologists to answer such questions. They have at last figured out that if one member of a family has Hodgkin's, the chance that close relatives will get it is about three times greater than normal. But when such related cases occur, are they the result of inherited factors, or of infection, or just coincidence? As for the students, the two men were unrelated and did not even come from the same town.

Student No. 1 enrolled at Galveston in September of 1961, and was soon rushed by Student No. 2, a second-year man, for his fraternity. After that they saw little of each other because Student No. 2 lived in the fraternity house, while No. 1 lived off the campus with his wife. But when No. 2 went away for a few weeks in early 1962, No. 1 moved into his dormitory room. It is now clear that No. 2 was then already showing the first signs of Hodgkin's and No. 1's case developed six months later.

"The room still contained most of Student 2's belongings," says Dr. W. K. George in College Health, "and it is probable that the bed linens had not been changed." The researchers are not convinced that Hodgkin's--a baffling disease marked by periodic fevers and lassitude--can be transmitted in any such obvious fashion. But the facts are reminiscent of an earlier observation: in 1960, in a large group of Hodgkin's victims in Germany, every patient was found to have been previously infected with an ornithosis virus like that of psittacosis (parrot fever). In the Galveston case, the researchers say, "our two patients could easily have had opportunity for infection from pigeons, which were often just outside the window of their upper-story room." If a virus like that of psittacosis can be proved to initiate cell changes in Hodgkin's, both theories about the origin of the disease will be neatly fitted together and proved right.

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