title: Inferences about the global scenario of human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 infection using data mining of viral sequences.
abstract: Human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) is mainly associated with two diseases: tropical spastic paraparesis/HTLV-1-associated myelopathy (TSP/HAM) and adult T-cell leukaemia/lymphoma. This retrovirus infects five-10 million individuals throughout the world. Previously, we developed a database that annotates sequence data from GenBank and the present study aimed to describe the clinical, molecular and epidemiological scenarios of HTLV-1 infection through the stored sequences in this database. A total of 2,545 registered complete and partial sequences of HTLV-1 were collected and 1,967 (77.3%) of those sequences represented unique isolates. Among these isolates, 93% contained geographic origin information and only 39% were related to any clinical status. A total of 1,091 sequences contained information about the geographic origin and viral subtype and 93% of these sequences were identified as subtype "a". Ethnicity data are very scarce. Regarding clinical status data, 29% of the sequences were generated from TSP/HAM and 67.8% from healthy carrier individuals. Although the data mining enabled some inferences about specific aspects of HTLV-1 infection to be made, due to the relative scarcity of data of available sequences, it was not possible to delineate a global scenario of HTLV-1 infection.
authors.affiliation: Centro de Pesquisa Gonçalo Moniz-Fiocru, Salvador, BA, Brasil.
authors.forename: Thessika Hialla Almeida
authors.initials: TH
authors.lastname: Araujo
authors.affiliation: Centro de Pesquisa Gonçalo Moniz-Fiocru, Salvador, BA, Brasil.
authors.forename: Fernanda Khouri
authors.initials: FK
authors.lastname: Barreto
authors.affiliation: Centro de Pesquisa Gonçalo Moniz-Fiocru, Salvador, BA, Brasil.
authors.forename: Luiz Carlos Júnior
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Alcântara
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Ciências da Saúde, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador, BA, Brasil.
authors.forename: Aline Cristina Andrade Mota
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Miranda
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001483:Base Sequence; D057225:Data Mining; D030561:Databases, Nucleic Acid; D005260:Female; D062306:Geography, Medical; D014943:Global Health; D015490:HTLV-I Infections / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000821:virology*; D015368:Human T-lymphotropic virus 1 / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D017720:Molecular Epidemiology; D014584:User-Computer Interface