Rz. Xu et al., HUMAN ACUTE MYELOID LEUKEMIAS MAY BE ETIOLOGICALLY ASSOCIATED WITH NEW HUMAN RETROVIRAL INFECTION, Leukemia research, 20(6), 1996, pp. 449-455
The etiology of human acute myeloid leukemias (AML) remains uncertain.
In order to examine the possibility of retroviral etiology in AML, we
determined retroviral antigens related to HTLV-I in leukemic cell sam
ples from 32 AML cases and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMNCs)
from 20 healthy donors by D-IGSS with high sensitivity and specificit
y, reverse transcriptase (RT) activity by a simple and sensitive non-r
adioisotopic RT assay, and retroviral particles by electron microscopy
. The HTLV-I-related antigens were detected in 50.0% (16/32) of fresh
leukemic cell samples and 87.5% (28/32) of cultured leukemic cell samp
les. The HTLV-I-related antigen-positive cells in fresh and cultured l
eukemic samples were 10.2% and 52.8%, respectively. Both frequency and
level of HTLV-I-related antigens in cultured samples were much higher
than in fresh samples. In contrast, no HTLV-I-related antigens were f
ound in normal hematopoietic cells from 20 healthy donors. Further stu
dy results show that RT activity was detected not only in HTLV-I-relat
ed antigen-positive samples, but was also well correlated with the lev
el of HTLV-I-related antigens in these samples, and preferred Mn++ to
Mg++ as a cation. Moreover, typical retroviral particles were localize
d in most cultured HTLV-I-related antigen-positive samples by immunoel
ectron microscope, These data suggest that hu man acute myeloid leukem
ias may be etiologically associated with new hu man retroviral infecti
on. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.