Phylogram generated by the Fitch and Margoliash method, based on 334 nucleotides of the ORF26 of HHV-8 detected in tissue samples from 6 patients with POEMS syndrome, 1 HIV-infected patient with Kaposi’s sarcoma and multicentric Castleman’s disease (KS/MCD), 8 healthy African blood donors (ABD), and 12 representative sequences previously used to define 3 subgroups of HHV-8 variability in ORF26 (from patients with HIV-related Kaposi’s sarcoma: KSHV AIDS, ST1 AIDS KS, ST2 AIDS KS, ST3 AIDS KS, C282 AIDS KS, ASM70 Lung KS, and AKS1 AIDS KS; from patients with non–HIV-related Kaposi’s sarcoma: 431 KAP Endemic KS and EKS1 non-AIDS KS; and from patients with HIV-associated body-cavity–based lymphoma: BCBL-1, BCBL-2, and BCBLR AIDS Lym).14 KSHV AIDS is from the original sequence published by Chang et al,3 including the KS330₂₃₃Bam fragment; BCBL-1 and BCBL-2 have been previously reported by Cesarman et al.56 The 31 examined 334-bp ORF26 sequences of HHV-8 genome fell into three distinct but very narrow subgroupings, corresponding to variants of the subgroups A, B, and C defined by Zong et al.14 However, distinct clades among the HHV-8 strains were not supported by significant bootstrap values. All ORF26 sequences from patients with POEMS syndrome belonged to the subgroup B. Homologous BDLF1 gene of EBV (GenBank: VO1555) and ORF26 of herpesvirus Saimiri (HVS) (GenBank: AF005370) were used as outgroups. Vertical branches are for clarity only; the lengths of the horizontal branches are proportional to the single base changes. Numbers at nodes represent the percentage of bootstrap samples for 100 replications, for which the corresponding cluster is depicted to the right. BM, bone marrow; KS, Kaposi’s sarcoma; Lym, lymphoma; LN, lymph node; Myel, myeloma.