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...

We have isolated and characterised two divergent simian T-lymphotropic viruses (STLV), not belonging to the established human and simian T-lymphotropic virus lineages HTLV-1/STLV-1 and HTLV-2. STLV-L, from an Eritrean sacred baboon (Papio hamadryas), has been typed as a third type of simian T-lymphotropic virus, distinct from HTLV-1/STLV-1 and HTLV-2. The other virus, isolated from Congolese bo...

Adult T-cell lymphoma (ATL) is a hematological malignancy of CD4+ mature T-lymphocytes commonly associated with chronic human T-lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-1) infection. Chronic HTLV-1 infection induces oncogenic mutations in T-cells, leading to an acute malignant transformation host cells. Atypically, ATL presents dermatological and pulmonary symptoms consistent “smoldering” disease patter...

The seroprevalence and geographic distribution of HTLV-1/2 among blood donors are extremely important to transfusion services. We evaluated the seroprevalence of HTLV-1/2 infection among first-time blood donor candidates in Ribeirão Preto city and region. From January 2000 to December 2010, 1,038,489 blood donations were obtained and 301,470 were first-time blood donations. All samples were scr...