title: No evidence of vertical transmission of HTLV-I in bottle-fed children.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. achilea@uol.com.br
authors.forename: Achiléa L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Bittencourt
authors.forename: Ester C
authors.initials: EC
authors.lastname: Sabino
authors.forename: Maria Cecília
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Costa
authors.forename: Celia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pedroso
authors.forename: Licia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Moreira
mesh_terms: 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