Plasma cell infiltration and tissue destruction are hallmarks of Epstein-Barr virus infection in periodontitis

Expression profiling by microarray was performed to delineate the EBV effect on the transcriptome of gingival tissues from periodontitis patients and healthy volunteers. The transcriptome analysis revealed numerous genes that were differentially expressed in periodontitis only when EBV was present. The most upregulated genes were related to inflammatory/immune response, B and plasma cell markers. Conversely, major downregulation was reported for genes related to epithelial tissue organization and structural support. The results provide new significant insights regarding EBV physiopathology in the gum, assigning a direct etiopathogenetic contribution to EBV in periodontitis. A total of 16 participants were selected for transcriptomic analyses corresponding to 4 healthy EBV-negative (H_NEG), 4 healthy EBV-positive (H_EBV), 4 periodontitis EBV-negative (P_NEG) and 4 periodontitis EBV-positive (P_EBV) tissues.