See page 932 Emerging zoonotic diseases are among the most important public-health threats facing humanity. One of the major examples is the AIDS epidemic which emerged in the 1980s as a result of cross-species transmissions of simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIVs) to human beings several decades earlier. As with HIV, other retroviruses (such as human T-lymphotropic viruses 1 and 2) are also o...

Over the past 20 years, there has been a major increase in the safety of the blood supply, as demonstrated by declining rates of posttransfusion infection and reductions in estimated residual risk for such infections. Reliable estimates of residual risk have been possible within the American Red Cross system because of the availability of a large amount of reliable and consistent data on donati...

Almost a quarter of a century ago, Oldstone and colleagues proposed that infection of cells by noncytopathic viruses may lead to an alteration of the cells' ability to produce certain products or perform certain tasks, i.e., inhibition of "luxury function." In this issue of the JCI, this topic has been revisited by Yamano et al., who demonstrate that human T cell lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV...

Acute lung injury during pregnancy results in morbidity and mortality in both the mother and the fetus. Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia (PCP) is a rare disease but may occur in pregnant immune-suppressed women. Here, we describe a case of acute lung injury due to PCP and alveolar hemorrhage in a pregnant woman who was a human T lymphotropic virus type-1 (HTLV-1) carrier. PCP should be consider...

Human T-lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) is a persistent CD4+ T-lymphotropic retrovirus. Most HTLV-1-infected individuals remain asymptomatic, but a proportion develop adult T cell leukemia or inflammatory disease. It is not fully understood how HTLV-1 persists despite a strong immune response or what determines the risk of HTLV-1-associated diseases. Until recently, it has been difficult to ...