title: Seroepidemiology of HTLV-I infection in northeast Thailand: a four year surveillance.
abstract: The human T-lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) can be transmitted through blood transfusion, sexual contact, perinataly and by breast feeding. We carried out a four years seroepidemiology surveillance study of HTLV-I infection among northeast Thai population by screening for antibodies to HTLV-I (anti-HTLV-I) in 1992, 1993, 1995 and 1997. A total of 8,323 blood samples were collected from 6,228 blood donors, 832 pregnancies, 219 multitransfused patients, 53 HIV positive intravenous drug users and 1,000 northeast-Thai workers at different periods of time. The serum samples were tested for anti-HTLV-I by particle agglutination (PA) technique and confirmed by Western blot. One sample from a multitransfused patient collected in 1992 and one sample from a blood donor collected in 1995 demonstrated positive anti-HTLV-I screening by PA but negative by Western blot. This finding indicates that at present HTLV-I is not a public health problem in the northeast of Thailand but surveillance should be continually conducted.
authors.affiliation: Blood Transfusion Centre, Faculty of Medicine, Khon Kaen University, Thailand.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Urwijitaroon
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Barusrux
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Puapairoj
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Romphruk
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Khampeera
mesh_terms: D000372:Agglutination Tests; D015153:Blotting, Western; D015481:HTLV-I Antibodies / Q000097:blood; D015490:HTLV-I Infections / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000635:transmission; D006801:Humans; D011159:Population Surveillance; D013785:Thailand / Q000453:epidemiology
chemical_list: D015481:HTLV-I Antibodies