title: HTLV type 1 molecular study in Brazilian villages with African characteristics giving support to the post-Columbian introduction hypothesis.
abstract: We performed an HTLV epidemiological study of 986 individuals from 17 villages from the same state of Salvador, the city with the highest HTLV-1 prevalence in Brazil. The HTLV-1 prevalence was 3.85%, 1.56%, and 1.23% in three villages. Phylogenetic analysis of the LTR region demonstrated that all positive samples analyzed belonged to the Transcontinental subgroup of the HTLV-1 Cosmopolitan subtype. Three of the new HTLV-1 sequences formed a well-supported clade within one of the Latin American clusters that contain a South African sequence. This Latin American cluster that segregated from the same ancestor as the other clade contained a Central African sequence. This ancestral relationship could support our previous report that suggests that this subgroup was first introduced into South Africa as a result of the migration of the Bantu population from Central Africa to Southern Africa over the past 3000 years, and afterward to Brazil during the slave trade between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.
authors.affiliation: Bahia School of Medicine and Public Health/Bahia Foundation for Development of Science, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.
authors.forename: Filipe Ferreira de Almeida
authors.initials: FF
authors.lastname: Rego
authors.forename: Luiz Carlos Junior
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Alcantara
authors.forename: Jose Pereira
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Moura Neto
authors.forename: Aline Cristina Andrade Mota
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Miranda
authors.forename: Osmario de Souza
authors.initials: Ode S
authors.lastname: Pereira
authors.forename: Marilda de Souza
authors.initials: Mde S
authors.lastname: Gonçalves
authors.forename: Bernardo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Galvão-Castro
mesh_terms: D001938:Brazil / Q000453:epidemiology; D004641:Emigration and Immigration; D015490:HTLV-I Infections / Q000453:epidemiology*; D015368:Human T-lymphotropic virus 1 / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D017720:Molecular Epidemiology; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D012424:Rural Population; D020079:Terminal Repeat Sequences / Q000235:genetics