SEROEPIDEMIOLOGY OF HUMAN T-CELL LYMPHOTROPIC VIRUS TYPE-I II IN NORTHEASTERN BRAZIL/

We investigated the prevalence of human T-lymphotropic virus I/II (HTL V-I/II) infection in Bahia, a state in Northeastern Brazil. Healthy in dividuals (n = 327) and patients (n = 337) with a variety of diseases were screened for antibodies to HTLV-I/II using an enzyme immunoassay and Western blot. The overall prevalence among healthy subjects was 1. 8% (six of 327); among patients it was 18.4% (62 of 337). Patients wit h AIDS had the highest prevalence of HTLV-I/II infection, 22.7% (20/88 ), followed by randomly selected patients from an infectious disease h ospital, 19.4% (25 of 129), and tuberculosis patients, 11.1 % (10 of 9 0). Four of 14 patients with myelopathy and three of 16 patients with lymphoid leukemia or lymphoma were seropositive for HTLV-I\II. Sixty-t hree of 68 HTLV-I/II-positive specimens were then typed: 53 patients w ere HTLV-I positive, three patients were HTLV-II positive, and in seve n patients the assay could not distinguish infection by HTLV-I or II. The finding among HIV-seropositive intravenous drug users in Bahia of coinfection with HTLV-I is contrasted with reports from other areas in which dual infection occurs with HTLV-II. Although high prevalence of HTLV-I infection was found in Bahia, the extent and clinical manifest ations of HTLV-II/I infection in Brazil remains imprecisely defined, a nd further studies are needed.