Lack of evidence of HTLV-I/II infection in T CD8 malignant or reactive lymphoproliferative disorders in France: a serological and/or molecular study of 169 cases.
Human T lymphotropic virus type II (HTLV-II), originally isolated in 1982 from a patient with a "T hairy cell leukemia", has not yet been proven to be the causative agent of any specific hematological disease. In order to screen for such an event, and because HTLV-II has a preferential tropism for OKT8 (CD8) T cells (both in vivo and in vitro), we searched for the presence of HTLV-II in lymphoproliferative diseases (LP) of CD8+ T cells. We report a serological and/or molecular study of 169 patients with a T CD8 LP, including 76 patients with malignant or reactive T CD8 LP (34 lymphomas, 27 large granular leukemias, three prolymphocytic leukemias, one hairy cell leukemia, 11 reactive T CD8 LP) and 93 HIV-1+ patients with a T CD8 peripheral lymphocytosis ( > 1500/mm3) from a prospective HIV cohort involving 1264 individuals. In the first series, the 40 sera available were all HTLV-I/II negative, except a 67-year-old French Guyanan man, with a cutaneous large T CD8 cell lymphoma, HTLV-I+. Furthermore, the molecular analysis of the 69 available DNA samples by PCR failed to detect any proviral HTLV-I/II sequences, except for the HTLV-I+ patient. The serological study of the 93 HIV-1+ individuals with CD8 lymphocytosis, showed that three patients were HTLV-I+, but none was HTLV-II+. Thus, in contrast to HTLV-I, whose etiological role in adult T cell leukemia is now well established, there is neither epidemiological nor molecular evidence that prototypic HTLV-II may be etiologically associated specifically with any of the CD8+ T cell LP investigated in this report.
Fouchard
N
N
Unité d'Epidémiologie des Virus Oncogènes, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France.
Flageul
B
B
Bagot
M
M
Avril
M F
MF
Hermine
O
O
Sigaux
F
F
Merle-Beral
H
H
Troussard
X
X
Delfraissy
J F
JF
de Thé
G
G
D001483:Base Sequence; D018414:CD8-Positive T-Lymphocytes / Q000473:pathology* / Q000821:virology; D005260:Female; D005602:France; D015368:Human T-lymphotropic virus 1 / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D015367:Human T-lymphotropic virus 2 / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D006801:Humans; D008232:Lymphoproliferative Disorders / Q000821:virology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction