VIM and Epstein-Barr virus infection: Vimentin, a major constituent of the intermediate filament family of proteins, serves scaffolding functions within mesenchymal cells and has been implicated in facilitating cell transformation and latent EBV-derived membrane protein 1 (LMP1)-signaling during EBV infection [17,18] and IgM antibodies preferentially binding to vimentin and intermediate filaments have previously been detected in IM sera [19,20,21].