High Seroprevalence of Human T-Cell Lymphotropic Virus Type 1 in Blood Donors in Guyana and Molecular and Phylogenetic Analysis of New Strains in the Guyana Shelf (Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana)

Abstract

The prevalence of human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) and HTLV-2 in blood donors in Guyana has never been estimated. We evaluated the prevalence of these viruses in blood donors by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and Western blotting and showed a prevalence of HTLV-1 of 1.3%; no HTLV-2 was detected. Female donors had a much higher HTLV-1 seroprevalence (3.6%) than male donors (0.7%). HTLV-1-seropositive donors tended to be slightly older than the average age for the total pool of donors. We also investigated the phylogenetic and molecular characteristics of HTLV-1 strains in Guyana and compared them with those identified in Suriname and French Guiana. Analysis of portions of the env and long terminal repeat nucleotide sequences showed that all the strains in Guyana and Suriname, like those in French Guiana, belonged to the transcontinental group of cosmopolitan subtype A. The similarities were greater between strains from Suriname and Guyana than between strains from Suriname and Guyana and those from French Guiana. Nevertheless, our results confirm that the HTLV-1 strains in all three countries have a common African origin.

Global epidemiology of HTLV-I infection and associated diseases

“…Somewhat lower seroprevalence rates are found in several countries in South America (Castillo et al, 2000;Carneiro-Proietti et al, 2002;Kazanji and Gessain, 2003;Catalan-Soares et al, 2004;Pouliquen et al, 2004), although to our knowledge, no studies from representative samples of the general population have been conducted so far in South America. Data from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Peru are for the most part restricted to blood donors (up to 2% of seropositivity to HTLV-I/II) (Galvao-Castro et al, 1997; Kazanji and Gessain, 2003; Leon et al, 2003;Sanchez-Palacios et al, 2003;Gastaldello et al, 2004), pregnant women and samples of specific native populations (Ishak et al, 2003), as well as IDU from Brazil.…”

New Insights into Prevalence, Genetic Diversity, and Proviral Load of Human T-Cell Leukemia Virus Types 1 and 2 in Pregnant Women in Gabon in Equatorial Central Africa

“…HTLV-2 LTR and env amplification was performed as described previously (26). Purified PCR products were cloned with the pCR2.1 TOPO plasmid (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA), and positive clones were selected, extracted, purified, and sequenced with an automatic sequencing system as described previously (26,47).…”

“…For sequencing and phylogenetic analysis, PCR was performed with several specific HTLV-1 primers located within the long terminal repeat (LTR) and env regions, as described previously (47). HTLV-2 LTR and env amplification was performed as described previously (26).…”

Insights into origins of Human T-cell Lymphotropic Virus Type 1 based on new strains from aboriginal people of Canada

“…However, opinions on the origins and spread of HTLV-1 remain heterogeneous. Some studies support a strictly recent (''post-Columbian'' hypothesis) dissemination (Gessain et al, 1992(Gessain et al, , 1994(Gessain et al, , 2000Van Dooren et al, 1998;Talarmin et al, 1999;Pouliquen et al, 2004;Alcantara et al, 2006). Others, however, (influenced by ongoing discovery of HTLV-1 in Asian and American indigenous groups) support an alternative hypothesis of an ancient presence in Asia and the Americas, with some post-Columbian gene flow (Miura et al, 1994(Miura et al, , 1997Picard et al, 1995;Yamashita et al, 1998Yamashita et al, , 1999Yamashita et al, , 2001Ohkura et al, 1999Ohkura et al, , 2005Syrtsev et al, 2000;Eguchi et al, 2009).…”