Abstract

To establish the phenotype of human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1)-infected cells in peripheral blood, the polymerase chain reaction was used to detect and quantitate viral DNA in subpopulations of leukocytes obtained from patients with tropical spastic paraparesis and asymptomatic carriers. HTLV-1 could not be detected in peripheral blood mononuclear cells thoroughly depleted of T lymphocytes (E- CD3-), nor could it be detected in highly enriched populations of B lymphocytes (E- CD19+), monocytes (E- CD14+), or natural killer cells (E- CD16+). T lymphocytes were strongly positive for HTLV-1, and fractionation of this population revealed that 90 to 99% of the HTLV-1 DNA segregated with the CD4+ CD8- and CD45RO+ subsets. No difference between the cell type distribution of HTLV-1 in the asymptomatic carrier and the subjects with tropical spastic paraparesis was evident. Southern hybridization of genomic DNA prepared from the peripheral blood of HTLV-1 carriers indicated that up to 10% of circulating leukocytes may carry the HTLV-1 provirus.