“…One of the means to achieve this goal is to know the real prevalence of the infection and associated diseases in the general population and in individuals who could acquire/transmit this infection more easily, such as individuals infected with other microorganisms that share routes of transmission with HTLV-1 8,9,19,20 and HTLV-1-infected mothers who could transmit the virus to their infants during breastfeeding 4,6,7 . In Brazil, the estimated number of HTLV-1-infected individuals, as well as individuals with HTLV-1-associated diseases, is high but misdiagnosed 1,4,5,[21][22][23][24] ; thus, we decided to search for strategies that could reduce the cost of HTLV screening in this country to help the Ministry of Health of Brazil to introduce the serology of HTLV-1/2 in health care programs, especially in the national HTLV antenatal screening program. Using two EIAs commonly employed in screening in public health laboratories in Brazil, we tested the strategy of pooling sera, taking into account previous studies that demonstrated that pooling is feasible and costeffective mostly in populations with low prevalence of HIV and HTLV and/or in countries with limited resources [12][13][14][15] .…”