Immunopathogenesis of Human T-Cell Leukemia Virus Type-1-Associated MyelopathyTropical Spastic Paraparesis Recent Perspectives.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Leukemia Research and Treatment Volume 2012, Article ID 259045, 12 pages doi:10.1155/2012/259045 Review Article Immunopathogenesis of Human T-Cell Leukemia Virus Type-1-Associated Myelopathy/Tropical Spastic Paraparesis: Recent Perspectives Mineki Saito1 and Charles R. M. Bangham2 1 Department of Immunology, Graduate School of Medicine, University of the Ryukyus, 207 Uehara, Okinawa 903-0215, Japan 2 Department of Immunology, Wright-Fleming Institute, Imperial College London, Norfolk Place, London W2 1PG, UK Correspondence should be addressed to Mineki Saito, mineki@med.u-ryukyu.ac.jp Received 1 August 2011; Revised 30 September 2011; Accepted 9 October 2011 Academic Editor: Pooja Jain Copyright © 2012 M. Saito and C. R. M. Bangham. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Human T-cell leukemia virus type-1 (HTLV-1) is a replication-competent human retrovirus associated with two distinct types of disease only in a minority of infected individuals: the malignancy known as adult T-cell leukemia (ATL) and a chronic inflammatory central nervous system disease HTLV-1-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP). HAM/TSP is a chronic progressive myelopathy characterized by spastic paraparesis, sphincter dysfunction, and mild sensory disturbance in the lower extremities. Although the factors that cause these different manifestations of HTLV-1 infection are not fully understood, accumulating evidence from host population genetics, viral genetics, DNA expression microarrays, and assays of lymphocyte function suggests that complex virus