Tokuya Ohsawa, Tsukasa Morimura, Yoshitaka Hagari, Tetsuji Kawakami, Motoyuki Mihara, Kazumitsu Hirai, Kazufumi Ikuta, Masanao Murakami, Takeshi Sairenji, Tomocho Matsuse
DOI: 10.1080/000155501317140106

We describe a unique patient with mosquito-bite hypersensitivity who had extremely high titres of Epstein-Barr virus antibodies. For many years he developed intractable ulcers on the sites of mosquito-bite. Epstein-Barr virus infection was detected in almost all inflammatory cells in the ulcers and in the peripheral blood lymphocytes by using in situ hybridization to Epstein-Barr virus-encoded small ribonucleic acids and by polymerase chain reaction to Epstein-Barr virus DNA. The inflammatory cells in the ulcers were positive for T-cell marker. Our results suggest that the Epstein-Barr virus infection in T cells may participate in the pathogenesis of exaggerated mosquito hypersensitivity and in delayed healing of ulcers on the sites of mosquito-bite.