Preliminary seroepidemiological studies on the human syncytial virus.

The seroepidemiology of the human syncytial virus was investigated by means of an indirect immunofluorescence test on 241 sera from Kenya, Tunisia, Singapore and Britain. These included sera from patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma, other tumours of the oro-nasopharynx, tumours of other parts of the body, and from normal donors. In this study, the virus was found to infect only Kenyan Africans and all but one of these seropositive subjects had tumours, particularly of the oro-nasopharyngeal spaces. The significance of these findings is discussed.