title: Extraordinary high rate of HTLV type II seropositivity in intravenous drug abusers in south Vietnam.
abstract: Serum specimens (n = 1899) were assayed for infections with HTLV-I, HTLV-II, and HIV-1 in seven classified groups of normal healthy controls, children, pregnant women, prostitutes, intravenous drug abusers, patients under going hemodialysis, and hemophiliacs in South and North Vietnam. Surprisingly, 125 of 954 samples from South Vietnam exhibited seropositivity for HTLV-II and 119 of these belonged to the group of IVDAs (n = 200). The remaining six positives were a healthy control, a prostitute, two children, and two patients under going hemodialysis. Two IVDAs who were seropositive for HTLV-I and 10 of 15 seropositives for HIV-1 were also positive for HTLV-II in this population. In contrast, no seropositives to any of the viruses were detected in the North Vietnamese samples (0 of 945). The HTLV-II-seropositive IVDAs exhibited increased seropositivity with age compared with HIV-1 seropositivity in the population, and there was no statistical relation between seropositivity for HTLV-II and HIV-1. The HTLV-IIs in South Vietnam IVDAs appeared, by subtype-specific peptide ELISA, to be a mixture of both subtypes a and b, with subtype a predominant. It seems possible that HTLV-II may have been introduced into this population from IVDAs from the United States during the Vietnam conflict, but in a period prior to, or early in, the introduction of HIV-1 to IVDAs.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Immunology, AIDS Research Center, National Institute of Health, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Fukushima
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Takahashi
authors.forename: W W
authors.initials: WW
authors.lastname: Hall
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Nakasone
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nakata
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Song
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Dinh Duc
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Hien
authors.forename: X Q
authors.initials: XQ
authors.lastname: Nguyen
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ngoc Trinh
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006679:HIV Seropositivity / Q000097:blood / Q000821:virology; D015497:HIV-1 / Q000302:isolation & purification; D015491:HTLV-II Infections / Q000150:complications* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000821:virology; D015368:Human T-lymphotropic virus 1 / Q000302:isolation & purification; D015367:Human T-lymphotropic virus 2 / Q000145:classification / Q000302:isolation & purification; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011247:Pregnancy; D016036:Seroepidemiologic Studies; D015819:Substance Abuse, Intravenous / Q000150:complications* / Q000821:virology; D014744:Vietnam / Q000453:epidemiology