Molecular epidemiology of HTLV-II among United States blood donors and intravenous drug users: an age-cohort effect for HTLV-II RFLP type aO.
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.
Murphy
E L
EL
Department of Laboratory Medicine, University of California San Francisco 94143, USA. murphy@labmed.ucsf.edu
Mahieux
R
R
de Thé
G
G
Tekaia
F
F
Ameti
D
D
Horton
J
J
Gessain
A
A
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D001782:Blood Donors; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005006:Ethnicity; D005260:Female; D015491:HTLV-II Infections / Q000453:epidemiology*; D015367:Human T-lymphotropic virus 2 / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D006801:Humans; D007198:Indians, North American; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017720:Molecular Epidemiology; D010802:Phylogeny; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D012150:Polymorphism, Restriction Fragment Length; D012307:Risk Factors; D017421:Sequence Analysis; D015819:Substance Abuse, Intravenous / Q000097:blood / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000821:virology*; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology