Mice virus might be responsible for breast cancer:

  July 13, 2004

A new study conducted by researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York has revealed that a rodent virus might play a role in the development of breast cancer, reports Nature.

According to the lead author, Stella Melana, "This doesn't mean that the virus causes the cancer but it means there may be a link." The DNA sequences were almost identical to those of a virus called MMTV, which causes breast cancer in mice.

The team looked for MMTV-like viruses in breast tumour biopsies taken from women living in six different countries. Over 70 percent of Tunisian samples contained fragments of the virus, compared with around 35 percent of samples from the United States, Italy, Australia and Argentina, and less than 1 percent of samples from Vietnam.

The researchers say that this roughly corresponds to the distribution of the virus-carrying house mouse, Mus domesticus, which is extremely common in North Africa but less so in the United States and elsewhere.