Seroepidemiology of HTLV-I Infection in Northeast Thailand: a Four Year Surveillance

The human T-lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) can be transmitted through blood transfusion, sexual contact, perinataly and by breast feeding. We carried out a four years seroepidemiology surveillance study of HTLV-I infection among northeast Thai population by screening for antibodies to HTLV-I (anti-HTLV-I) in 1992, 1993, 1995 and 1997. A total of 8,323 blood samples were collected from 6,228 blood donors, 832 pregnancies, 219 multitransfused patients, 53 HIV positive intravenous drug users and 1,000 northeast-Thai workers at different periods of time. The serum samples were tested for anti-HTLV-I by particle agglutination (PA) technique and confirmed by Western blot. One sample from a multitransfused patient collected in 1992 and one sample from a blood donor collected in 1995 demonstrated positive anti-HTLV-I screening by PA but negative by Western blot. This finding indicates that at present HTLV-I is not a public health problem in the northeast of Thailand but surveillance should be continually conducted.