Short Communication: No Evidence of HTLV-3 and HTLV-4 Infection in New York State Subjects at Risk for Retroviral Infection

Abstract

The primate T-cell lymphoma viruses (PTLV) are divided into six distinct species. The biology and epidemiology of PTLV-1 and PTLV-2 are very well understood. However, that of PTLV-3, 4, 5, and 6 are not. Recently, in Cameroon, three and one humans were shown to be infected with HTLV-3 and HTLV-4, respectively. We undertook a study to ascertain whether any of these two retroviruses were present in the peripheral blood mononuclear cell DNA of New York State subjects deemed at risk for PTLV infection. Samples were analyzed by PTLV-3 and PTLV-4 specific PCR assays from the following human and simian subject types: African-American medical clinic patients; HTLV EIA+, WB indeterminate blood donors; intravenous drug users; patients with leukemia, lymphoma, myelopathy, polymyositis, or AIDS; and African chimpanzees. None of the 1200 subjects was positive for HTLV-3 or 4. The data indicate that, at the time of sample collection, no evidence exists for the dissemination of HTLV-3 or 4 to New York State. Continued epidemiological studies are warranted to explore the worldwide prevalence rates and dissemination patterns of HTLV-3 and 4 infections, and their possible disease associations.

HTLV infection among foreign pregnant women living in Spain

“…6,7,22,23 According to our results and those from others that failed to identify HTLV-3 and/or HTLV-4 infections in different risk groups, 16,17,24 it seems that these two new HTLV variants are not spreading worldwide and should not represent a major concern to date. However, the overall sensitivity of commercial EIA for recognizing HTLV-3 and/or HTLV-4 antibodies has not been well established and misdiagnosis may eventually occurs.…”

“…16 For the specific exclusion of HTLV-3 or HTLV-4 infections, primers specially designed for this purpose were used, as reported elsewhere. 17 Data from medical records were reviewed for subjects who were found to be HTLV-seropositive.…”

Trends in the prevalence and distribution of HTLV-1 and HTLV-2 infections in Spain

“…Moreover, they had no epidemiological link with Africa, being these two women from Venezuela and Spain, respectively. These results are in agreement with those from the United States, where a recent report has failed to identify HTLV-3 and/or HTLV-4 infection in risk groups, including individuals harboring indeterminate HTLV western blot patterns [20]. Although all individuals reported to date as infected with HTLV-3 or HTLV-4 have displayed reactivity on EIA designed for HTLV-1 and HTLV-2 screening [5,21], we should acknowledge that the overall sensitivity of these tests to pick up all HTLV-3 and/or HTLV-4 antibodies is currently unknown [22].…”

The challenge of describing the epidemiology of HTLV in the Amazon region of Brazil

“…Presently, there are six molecular subtypes (namely, a, b, c, d, e and f ) of HTLV-1 [2][3][4] and four (a, b, c and d) of HTLV-2 [5][6][7][8]. Two other types, HTLV-3 and HTLV-4, have been described [9] as examples of cross-species transmission in a geographically isolated forest area in Cameroon, but so far, neither have been detected elsewhere or have spread further [10,11].…”