Human T-lymphotropic virus type 1 infection in a patient with arthritis in mozambique: molecular characterization of human T-lymphotropic virus type 1 isolate.

摘要

Editor: Last year, we published the results from a cross-sectional survey on the prevalence of human T-lympho-tropic virus type 1 and 2 (HTLV-1/2) in individuals from public health centers in Mozambique. Briefly, we observed an overall HTLV-1/2 prevalence of 2.3% (2.9% in female and 1.1% in male subjects) that increased with age, and a regional variation in prevalence, 2.4%, 3.9%, and 0.9%, in Northern, Central, and Southern Mozambique, respectively. No association between HTLV-1 infection and socio-demographic variables or HIV status was detected, and no case of HTLV-2 infection was detected as well. Interestingly, one of 17 HTLV-1-infected individuals went to the health center because of rheumatic pain, and we speculated as to whether this symptom could be related to HTLV-1 infection. In the present investigation we decided to add some information concerning this case, searching for epidemio-logical correlates, proviral load, and HTLV-1 subtype carried by this patient. Of note, there are some controversial studies associating HTLV-1 with rheumatoid arthritis, and to our knowledge there is only one published study on HTLV-1 genotyping in Mozambique, and there is another study from Portugal that characterized HTLV-1 strains from two Mozambican immigrants.