Current Rheumatology Reports

, Volume 2, Issue 2, pp 156–162 | Cite as

Non-HIV retroviral associations with rheumatic disease

  • Dorothea Zucker-Franklin
Article

Abstract

While the human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) is the recognized cause of adult T cell leukemia, it is also associated with non-neoplastic, ostensibly autoimmune conditions, such as tropical spastic paraparesis. Moreover, among carriers of HTLV-I, the virus is strongly implicated in the development of a type of arthritis, which resembles rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Mice transgenic for HTLV-I tax develop RA-like pathology and Sjögren’s syndrome. Patients with RA and SS in HTLV-I nonendemic regions, such as the United States, are usually serologically negative for antibodies to the structural proteins of HTLV. However, they appear to harbor HTLV-I tax in their peripheral blood mononuclear cells three times as often as individuals who present as healthy blood donors. Because HTLV-I tax transactivates numerous inflammatory cytokines and is not normally found in the human genome, treatment with tax antisense oligonucleotides may provide a new therapeutic approach for selected RA patients proven to be HTLV-I "tax only" positive.

Keywords

Mycosis Fungoides Healthy Blood Donor Salivary Gland Epithelial Cell Rheumatic Manifestation Tropical Spastic Paraparesis 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Current Science Inc. 2000

Authors and Affiliations

  • Dorothea Zucker-Franklin
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of MedicineNew York University Medical CenterNew YorkUSA

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