Seroepidemiology of human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I/II in northeastern Brazil.

The authors investigated the prevalence of human T-lymphocyte virus I/II (HTLV-I/II) infection in Bahia a state in northeastern Brazil. Healthy individuals (n = 327) and patients (n = 337) with a variety of diseases were screened for antibodies to HTLV-I/II using an enzyme immunoassay and Western blot. The overall prevalence among healthy subjects was 1.8% (6 of 327); among patients it was 18.4% (62 of 337). Patients with AIDS had the highest prevalence of HTLV-I/II infection 22.7% (20/88) followed by randomly selected patients from an infectious disease hospital 19.4% (25 of 129) and tuberculosis patients 11.1% (10 of 90). 4 of 14 patients with myelopathy and 3 of 16 patients with lymphoid leukemia or lymphoma were seropositive for HTLV-I/II. 63 of 68 HTLV-I/II-positive specimens were then typed: 53 patients were HTLV-I positive 3 were HTLV-II positive and in 7 patients the assay could not distinguish infection by HTLV-I or II. The finding among HIV- seropositive intravenous drug users in Bahia of coinfection with HTLV-I is contrasted with reports from other areas in which dual infection occurs with HTLV-II. Although high prevalence of HTLV-I infection was found in Bahia the extent and clinical manifestations of HTLV-I/II infection in Brazil remains imprecisely defined and further studies are needed. (authors)