title: Seroprevalence of HTLV-I and HTLV-II in marrow transplant recipients.
abstract: HTLV-I and HTLV-II can both be transmitted through blood transfusions. Although the seroprevalence of HTLV-I/II in volunteer blood donors in low, patients with leukemia who received multiple blood transfusions are at increased risk for HTLV-I/II infection. Patients undergoing marrow transplantation for malignant and non-malignant diseases have often received multiple transfusions prior to transplantation. The seroprevalence of HTLV-I/II in marrow transplant recipients is not known, however. We studied pre-transplant sera from 317 patients receiving allogeneic or syngeneic marrow transplant in 1988 for antibodies to HTLV-I/II using an ELISA. Six sera were positive in this assay and nine other sera had absorbance values elevated above background. One of these 15 sera was confirmed positive in a Western blot assay; six others had an indeterminate reactivity. The seropositive patient was infected with HTLV-I and not HTLV-II as determined using a synthetic peptide-based ELISA; the indeterminate sera did not show reactivity to either HTLV-I or HTLV-II in this assay. Differentiation of HTLV-I from HTLV-II infection was also shown using a modified recombinant Western blot assay in which the seropositive patient showed reactivity to recombinant HTLV-I env gp46 and not recombinant HTLV-II env gp46. These results show infection with HTLV in one of 317 patients (0.3%) prior to marrow transplantation. The clinical consequences resulting from HTLV-I/II seropositivity during the severe immunosuppression accompanying marrow transplantation are not known. Testing blood donors for HTLV-I/II as is currently practised should reduce seroprevalence of HTLV-I/II in previously transfused marrow transplant recipients.
authors.affiliation: Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle.
authors.forename: T P
authors.initials: TP
authors.lastname: Loughran
authors.forename: M K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Shriver
mesh_terms: D001782:Blood Donors; D001803:Blood Transfusion; D015153:Blotting, Western; D016026:Bone Marrow Transplantation; D004797:Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay; D005260:Female; D015481:HTLV-I Antibodies / Q000097:blood; D015490:HTLV-I Infections / Q000453:epidemiology*; D015482:HTLV-II Antibodies / Q000097:blood; D015491:HTLV-II Infections / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D008875:Middle Aged; D012189:Retrospective Studies
chemical_list: D015481:HTLV-I Antibodies; D015482:HTLV-II Antibodies