# A sarcoma involving the jaws in African children

Source: https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-burkitt-sarcoma-involving-jaws-african-children-br-j-surg-1958/  
OnCo record `paper-burkitt-sarcoma-involving-jaws-african-children-br-j-surg-1958` (Key paper). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

A surgeon working in Uganda described a tumour of the jaw in children that nobody had named, and the pattern of where it occurred led, six years later, to the discovery of the first human cancer virus.

## Summary

Denis Burkitt was a surgeon at Mulago Hospital in Kampala. His 1958 report in the British Journal of Surgery described a tumour involving the jaws in African children as a distinct entity. Europe PMC indexes no abstract for the paper, so no figure from it is quoted here; the record exists because of what followed from it.

What followed was the beginning of viral oncology. Burkitt's mapping of where the tumour occurred, and the correspondence of that distribution with climate, prompted the search for an infectious cause. In 1964 Epstein, Achong and Barr found virus particles in lymphoblasts cultured from one of Burkitt's biopsies, the first human tumour virus. The lymphoma now carries Burkitt's name, is defined by the MYC translocation, and is one of the few aggressive lymphomas curable with chemotherapy alone in a high proportion of patients.

The paper was reprinted in 1972 in the Classics in Oncology series of CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, which is the version many readers encounter.

## Fields

- Kind: Key paper
- Last checked: 2026-10-01
- Also known as: Burkitt 1958; The first description of Burkitt lymphoma
- Tags: lymphoma-evidence
- Journal: British Journal of Surgery
- Year: 1958
- DOI: 10.1002/bjs.18004619704
- Authors: Burkitt D.
- Findings: Described a tumour involving the jaws in African children as a distinct clinical entity.; Europe PMC indexes no abstract for this record, so no figure from the paper is quoted here.; The paper was reprinted in 1972 in the Classics in Oncology series of CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians (PubMed 4632235).
- What it means: The clinical description that set off the search for a cancer virus. It is also an argument for geographic epidemiology: Burkitt found the cause by asking where the disease was, not by looking down a microscope.
- Caveats: A clinical case description from 1958, with no abstract indexed and no modern diagnostic criteria; the entity was defined histologically and then genetically much later.; The association with Epstein-Barr virus and with holoendemic malaria was established by others over the following two decades, not in this paper.

## Sources

- British Journal of Surgery 1958: https://doi.org/10.1002/bjs.18004619704
- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/13628987/
- Europe PMC: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/13628987

## Connected records

- key papers: [Virus particles in cultured lymphoblasts from Burkitt's lymphoma](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-epstein-virus-particles-burkitt-lymphoblasts-lancet-1964/)
- roadmaps: [Lymphoma roadmap: from a jaw tumour in Uganda and the first human cancer virus to gene-expression subtypes, PET-adapted chemotherapy, CAR-T cells, bispecific antibodies and the genetics-directed trials now recruiting](https://onco.cc/roadmaps/lymphoma-roadmap/)
- cancers: [Burkitt lymphoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/burkitt-lymphoma/), [Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (all types)](https://onco.cc/cancers/non-hodgkin-lymphoma/)
- fronts: [Diagnostics & Biomarkers](https://onco.cc/fronts/diagnostics/), [Prevention & Risk](https://onco.cc/fronts/prevention/)
- pathways: [MYC](https://onco.cc/pathways/myc/)
- bottlenecks: [Most of the world has almost no cancer care](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-global-access/), [Rare and paediatric cancers without markets](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-rare-cancers/)
- ideas: [The drugs that cure lymphoma, and the places that do not have them](https://onco.cc/ideas/lymphoma-ev-the-drugs-that-cure-and-the-places-without-them/)

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