| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,100,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,100,000)
Fiscal Year 1990: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000)
Fiscal Year 1989: ¥700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000)
Fiscal Year 1988: ¥800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000)
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| Research Abstract |
Following studies were performed in order to elucidate the neurological disorders observed in ATL and pathogenesis of HAM. (1) Neurological signs are frequently observed in ATL. Systemic neuropathological study of 41 ATL patient autopsied revealed direct infiltration of leukemic cells in the brain and spinal cord, which were closely related to drowsiness and dementia. Some cases showed giant cells or AIDS-like vacuolar myelopathy, but inflammatory lesions compatible with HAM was not detected in the spinal cord of ATL cases. (2) Based on the hypothesis that migration of HTLV-I infected activated T-cell into the spinal cord through blood-brain barrier is important for the pathogenesis of HAM, population of UCHL-I positive T-cells in the spinal cords of HTLV-I carrier (n=4), non-carrier (n=7), non-endemic area cases (n=17) was semiquantitatively examined. However, there was no significant difference among them. On the contrary, a conventional neuropathology negative clinical HAM case showed more than 3 times increase of T-cells. (3) Distribution of HTLV-I gene in various organs of a HAM case was studied by Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) using Tax coding SK45. The spinal cord, sciatic nerve, psoas muscle, lung and liver were Tax positive, while cerebrum, cerebellum, midbrain, pons and kidney were negative. HTLV-I seems to be related to multi-organ inflammatory disorders.
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