• Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, US Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA. purduem@mail.nih.gov

Prediagnostic serum concentration of soluble CD30 (sCD30), a marker for chronic B-cell stimulation, has been associated with increased risk of developing AIDS-related non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) in a recent study of HIV(+) patients. To investigate among healthy persons whether serum sCD30 is associated with NHL risk, we carried out a nested case-control study within the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial. There was a strong dose-response relationship between prediagnostic sCD30 concentration and NHL risk among 234 cases and 234 individually matched controls (odds ratio [95% confidence interval] for second, third, and fourth quartiles vs first quartile: 1.4 [0.8-2.6], 2.2 [1.2-4.1], 4.1 [2.2-7.8]; P(trend) < .001), which persisted among cases diagnosed 6 to 10 years after providing a blood sample. Given that a similar relationship has been observed among HIV(+) patients, our findings suggest that chronic B-cell stimulation may be an important mechanism involved in B-cell lymphomagenesis among severely immunocompromised and healthy populations alike.