No evidence of vertical transmission of HTLV-I in bottle-fed children.
The most frequent pathway of vertical transmission of HTLV-I is breast-feeding, however bottle fed children may also become infected in a frequency varying from 4 to 14%. In these children the most probable routes of infection are transplacental or contamination in the birth canal. Forty-one bottle-fed children of HTLV-I seropositive mothers in ages varying from three to 39 months (average age of 11 months) were submitted to nested polymerase chain reaction analysis (pol and tax genes). 81.5% of the children were born by an elective cesarean section. No case of infection was detected. The absence of HTLV-I infection in these cases indicates that transmission by transplacental route may be very infrequent.
Bittencourt
Achiléa L
AL
Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. achilea@uol.com.br
Sabino
Ester C
EC
Costa
Maria Cecília
MC
Pedroso
Celia
C
Moreira
Licia
L
D001903:Bottle Feeding; D002585:Cesarean Section; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D015490:HTLV-I Infections / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000635:transmission*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D018445:Infectious Disease Transmission, Vertical; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction