This study showed that freeze-thaw processing can eliminate the HTLV-I infectivity of mothers' milk, and that HTLV-I carriers can indirectly feed their infants using frozen-thawed mothers' milk as a way to prevent HTLV-I infection.
Breast feeding is known to be a major cause of vertical transmission of HTLV‐I from mothers to her children. The infectiousness of HTLV‐I in breast milk was reported to be lost during freezing and thawing processes. We therefore administered frozen‐and‐thawed breast milk of HTLV‐I carriers to their babies. Among the 13 babies given the frozen‐and‐thawed breast milk (now 12 months of age), no infection has been found yet. This result suggests that freezing and thawing of breast milk is a promising method for the prevention of vertical HTLV‐I infection to breast‐fed babies.
We developed a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method which has high sensitivity and simple technique in order to investigate the presence or absence of human T lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV‐I) provirus in cord blood mononuclear cells of neonates born to HTLV‐I carrier mothers. Out of 40, three subjects were found to contain the HTLV‐I provirus genome. These three subjects remained HTLV‐I sequence‐positive in follow‐up study. On the other hand, when examined by a conventional technique for detection of HTLV‐I‐associated antigen on peripheral mononuclear cells, all 40 neonates were HTLV‐I‐associated antigen‐negative. These results suggest that PCR is more sensitive than the conventional antigen detection method and is useful in early detection of HTLV‐I infection in neonates born to HTLV‐I carriers.
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