In the present study, the frequency, the activation and the cytokine and chemokine profile of HTLV-1 carriers with or without dermatological lesions were thoroughly described and compared. The results indicated that HTLV-1-infected patients with dermatological lesions have distinct frequency and activation status when compared to asymptomatic carriers. Alterations in the CD4(+)HLA-DR(+), CD8(+)...

INTRODUCTION Variations in human T cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) proviral load (PVL) in infected individuals over time are not well understood. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the evolution of proviral load in asymptomatic individuals and HAM/TSP patients in order to help determine periodicity for measuring proviral load. METHODS A group of 104 HTLV-1 infected patients, followed at the HTLV...

BACKGROUND Human T lymphotropic virus types 1 (HTLV-1) and 2 (HTLV-2) are frequent copathogens among individuals infected with human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1). The long-term effects of coinfection are unknown, and little information exists regarding how levels of HTLV-1/2 viral burden are affected by antiretroviral medications. METHODS Factors associated with HTLV-1/2 viral burden...

The prevalence of koala retrovirus (KoRV) provirus (DNA) and the average number of proviral insertions per cell vary in different free-ranging koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) populations across Australia. Populations in the northern states of Queensland and New South Wales have 100% proviral prevalence and mean proviral copy number of 140–165 per cell. In contrast, the proviral prevalence in the...

This review focuses on current approaches to understanding the immunopathogenesis of human T cell lymphotropic virus (HTLV) type I-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP) based on newly developed molecular and immunologic techniques that have been adapted to studies of HTLV-I proviral load, HTLV-I mRNA, and HTLV-I tax-specific CD8 T cells. These methods enable researchers t...

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...

We developed a real-time (RT) PCR quantitative assay to measure the level of the integrated viral genome of HTLV-1 in host peripheral blood-mononuclear cells (PB-MNC) from healthy carriers and patients with adult T-cell leukemia (ATL). All of the clinical specimens were serologically and molecularly characterized by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and Southern blot hybridization (SBH)...

Human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) infection is associated with a variety of human diseases including HTLV-I associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP), a chronic progressive inflammatory neurological disease. An important risk factor for the development of HAM/TSP is thought to be a high HTLV-I proviral load. Histopathological studies have demonstrated the presen...