| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
GD Ehrlich, JB Glaser, MA Abbott, DJ Slamon, D Keith, M Sliwkowski, J Brandis, E Keitelman, Y Teramoto and L Papsidero
Department of Medicine, SUNY HSC Syracuse, 13210.
The HTLV-I tax gene protein (Tax) is not packaged within the mature viral
particle from which the proteins for the commercially available
enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) are derived. Screening of 162
individuals within a cohort of white intravenous (IV) drug abusers,
previously identified as having an increased incidence of HTLV-I infection,
demonstrated that seven of them had antibodies to the HTLV-I Tax protein
but tested negative in HTLV-I ELISAs and Western blots prepared from
purified virion proteins. Three out of 35 individuals in other behaviorally
defined high-risk groups also displayed this limited pattern of reactivity
to HTLV-I proteins. The presence of the anti-HTLV- I p40/Tax antibodies was
determined by radioimmunoprecipitation assay (RIPA), which also revealed
low levels of anti-env reactivity. The specificity of the anti-p40
reactivity was confirmed on specific Tax ELISAs and Western blots prepared
from recombinantly produced Tax. In vitro gene amplification by the
polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to establish the presence of
sequences homologous to HTLV-I proviral DNA in four/four of these HTLV-I
ELISA negative, Tax ELISA/Tax western blot/RIPA positive individuals. These
data suggest that the true incidence of HTLV-I infection within high-risk
cohorts is greater than previously reported.
This article has been cited by other articles:
| |||||||||||
| Copyright © 1989 by American Society of Hematology Online ISSN: 1528-0020 | |||||||||