Molecular epidemiology of HTLV-II among United States blood donors and intravenous drug users: an age-cohort effect for HTLV-II RFLP type aO.

Pubmed ID: 9514966

Journal: Virology

Publication Date: March 15, 1998

Affiliation: Department of Laboratory Medicine, University of California San Francisco 94143, USA. murphy@labmed.ucsf.edu

MeSH Terms: Humans, Male, Adult, Female, Aged, Risk Factors, United States, Cohort Studies, Adolescent, Age Factors, Middle Aged, Blood Donors, Polymerase Chain Reaction, HTLV-II Infections, Human T-lymphotropic virus 2, Substance Abuse, Intravenous, Phylogeny, Molecular Epidemiology, Polymorphism, Restriction Fragment Length, Indians, North American, Sequence Analysis, Ethnicity

Grants: N01-HB-47114, N01-HB-97078, N01-HB-97077

Authors: Murphy EL, Gessain A, Mahieux R, de Thé G, Tekaia F, Ameti D, Horton J

Cite As: Murphy EL, Mahieux R, de Thé G, Tekaia F, Ameti D, Horton J, Gessain A. Molecular epidemiology of HTLV-II among United States blood donors and intravenous drug users: an age-cohort effect for HTLV-II RFLP type aO. Virology 1998 Mar 15;242(2):425-34.

Studies:

Abstract

Molecular subtyping was used to investigate the epidemiology of human T-lymphotropic virus type II (HTLV-II) in the United States. Nested polymerase chain reaction of the HTLV-II long terminal repeat region followed by restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis was performed on HTLV-II seropositive subjects including 97 U.S. blood donors without major risk factors for HTLV-II infection, 53 injection drug users (IDU), and 10 American Indian blood donors. Three new HTLV-II RFLP types were confirmed with DNA sequencing and phylogenetic analysis. HTLV-II RFLP type aO (Switzer classification) was associated with older age [adjusted odds ratio (OR) 1.06 per year of age, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.02-1.09] and with Black (OR 5.24, 95% CI 1.90-14.47) and White (OR 4.43, 95% CI 1.67-11.75) race/ethnicity. These data are consistent with an age-cohort effect for HTLV-II RFLP type aO among older White and Black IDU and blood donors. This finding could be explained by an epidemic of non-aO HTLV-II RFLP types among younger persons of Hispanic and other race/ethnicity, superimposed upon endemic HTLV-II RFLP type aO among older Black and White persons.