The correlation between virus load and specific cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) frequency during the chronic phase in human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection has been found to be negative in cross-sectional studies. We report here that, in infection with the related retrovirus human T-cell leukaemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1), the correlation is positive in asymptomatic carriers and zero ...

Retroviral infection is associated with a number of pathologic abnormalities, including a variety of cancers, immunologic diseases, and neurologic disorders. Shortly after its discovery in 1980, human T cell leukemia virus type I (HTLV-I) was found to be the etiologic agent of both adult T cell leukemia (ATL) and HTLV-I-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP), a neurologic ...

The presence of anti-Tax antibody responses in human T cell leukemia virus type I (HTLV-I)-infected individuals has been correlated with increased proviral load, increased risk of transmitting infection, and increased risk of developing tropical spastic paraparesis/HTLV-I-associated myelopathy (TSP/HAM). In this study, a rabbit model of HTLV-I infection was used to determine whether anti-Tax an...

BACKGROUND The Interleukin 28B (IL28B) rs12979860 polymorphisms was recently reported to be associated with the human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1) proviral load (PvL) and the development of the HTLV-1-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP). METHODS In an attempt to examine this hypothesis, we assessed the association of the rs12979860 genotypes with HTLV-1 PvL l...

Tropical spastic paraparesis/human T-cell leukemia type I-associated myelopathy (TSP/HAM) is caused by a human T-cell leukemia virus type I (HTLV-I) after a long incubation period. TSP/HAM is characterized by a chronic progressive paraparesis with sphincter disturbances, no/mild sensory loss, the absence of spinal cord compression and seropositivity for HTLV-I antibodies. The pathogenesis of th...

BACKGROUND We previously suggested that infection with the human T-lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) subtype C is associated with bronchiectasis among Indigenous Australians. Bronchiectasis might therefore result from an HTLV-1-mediated inflammatory process that is typically associated with a high HTLV-1 proviral load (PVL). Human T-lymphotropic virus type 1 PVL have not been reported for Indi...

BACKGROUND Here, we report on the partial and full-length genomic (FLG) variability of HTLV-1 sequences from 90 well-characterized subjects, including 48 HTLV-1 asymptomatic carriers (ACs), 35 HTLV-1-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP) and 7 adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATLL) patients, using an Illumina paired-end protocol. METHODS Blood samples were collected from...

We read with interest the recent article by Pennington et al. 1 Based on the ability to detect Tax DNA in the blood of asymptomatic carriers with proviral loads exceeding 10 8 DNA copies/L, the authors conclude that leukocyte depletion (LD) may not provide complete protection from human T-cell leukemia virus–I (HTLV-I) transmission by transfusion. Lau et al 2 proved that cytomegalovirus (CMV)–i...

background: human t cell lymphotropic virus type i (htlv-i)-associated myelopa-thy/tropical spastic paraparesis (ham/tsp) is an inflammatory disease which occurs in less than 2% of htlv-i -infected individuals. high proviral load, high htlv-i-specific cd8+ cytotoxic t lymphocyte frequency (ctl) and host genetic factors such as hla all appear to be associated with htlv-i infection. previous stud...

Seven hundred and four HIV-1/2-positive, antiretroviral therapy (ART) naïve patients were screened for HTLV-1 infection. Antibodies to HTLV-1 were found in 32/704 (4.5%) of the patients. Each co-infected individual was matched with two HIV mono-infected patients according to World Health Organization clinical stage, age +/-5 years and gender. Key clinical and laboratory characteristics were com...