Quantification of the virus-host interaction in human T lymphotropic virus I infection

Retrovirology

Table 1 Tax expression in CD4⁺ lymphocytes is 2.5–3 fold higher in HAM/TSP patients than ACs of comparable proviral load

		Patient	Proviral load (% PBMC)	Rate of CTL lysis (per CD8+ cell per day)	%Tax expression (Tax+CD4+/CD4+)	Mean Tax expression	Fold Increase in Tax Expression (HAM÷AC)
Group 1	AC	HBD	0.0	0.220	0.1	1.3	2.8
		HT	1.0	0.062	3.1
		HY	0.4	0.065	0.6
	HAM	TAQ	1.0	0.083	2.7	3.5
		TAY	2.2	0.298	4.4
Group 2	AC	HBH	4.0	0.020	2.7	2.8	3.0
		HBF	2.8	0.029	2.9
	HAM	TAT	4.2	0.058	9.6	8.5
		TAU	5.4	0.049	9.8
		TBA	3.5	0.050	6.1
Group 3	AC	HS	5.8	0.001	3.0	5.2	2.5
		HAY	10.6	-0.007	7.5
	HAM	TW	10.3	0.024	12.4	13.3
		TAC	12.1	0.091	11.1
		TBG	16.4	0.007	21.5
		TBI	12.3	0.003	8.1

The choice of groups of "comparable" proviral load is, to some extent, subjective but a range of alternative groupings gave similar results. This included a grouping in which the mean proviral load of ACs was higher than the mean proviral load of HAM/TSP patients in each group (it was necessary to omit some high proviral load HAM/TSP patients in order to obtain this alternative grouping). We have illustrated our results using this particular grouping because it is a representative grouping and because it yields two or more subjects in each group thus minimising the effect of outliers.

ISSN: 1742-4690