HTLV-l-associated myelopathy

Kubota R, Furukawa Y, Izumo S, Usuku K, Osame M (2003) Degenerate specificity of HTLV-1-specific CD8-I- T cells during viral replication in patients with HTLV-l-associated myelopathy (HAM/TSP). Blood 101 3074-3081. 

Kushida S, Matsumura M, Tanaka H, Ami Y, Hori M, Kobayashi M, Uchida K, Yagami K, Kameyama T, Yoshizawa T, et al. (1993) HTLV-l-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis-like rats by intravenous injection of HTLV-1-producing rabbit or human T-cell line into adult WKA rats. Jpn J Cancer Res 84 831-833. 

Umehara F, Izumo S, Nakagawa M, Ronquillo AT, Takahashi K, Matsumuro K, Sato E, Osame M (1993) Immunocytochemi-cal analysis of the cellular infiltrate in the spinal cord lesions in HTLV-l-associated myelopathy. J Neuropathol Exp Neurol 52 424-430. 

Wu E, Dickson DW, lacohson S, Raine CS (1993) Neuroaxonal dystrophy in HTLV-l-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis Neuropathologic and neuroimmunologic correlations. Acta Neuropathol (Berl) 86 224—235. 

Wu XM, Osoegawa M, Yamasaki K, Kawano Y, Ochi H, Horiuchi I, Minohara M, Ohyagi Y, Yamada T, Kira II (2000) Flow cytometric differentiation of Asian and Western types of multiple sclerosis, HTLV-l-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP) and hyperIgEaemic myelitis hy analyses of memory CD4 positive T cell subsets and NK cell subsets. 1 Neurol Sci 177 24-31. 

Yamano Y, Nagai M, Brennan M, Mora CA, Soldan SS, Tomaru U, Takenouchi N, Izumo S, Osame M, lacohson S (2002) Correlation of human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) ruRNA with proviral DNA load, virus-specific CD8(-i-) T cells, and disease severity in HTLV-l-associated myelopathy (HAM/TSP). Blood 99 88-94. 

The human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1) causes adult T-cell leukemia (ATE) and HTLV-l-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/ TSP) [69]. HTLV-1 encodes a transactivator. Tax, that is critical for virus replication and plays a central role in the development of ATL and HAM/TSP [69]. Tax does not bind to DNA directly but functions by interacting with a variety of cellular proteins [69]. Many protein-protein interactions of Tax have been determined by mutational analysis including CREB [70-72] and NF-kB [70,72]. To identify all the cellular proteins that interact with Tax, Wu et al. used chromatography, 2D gel electrophoresis, and mass spectrometric analysis of an HTLV-1-infected cell line (C81) [73]. As Tax functions in both the cytoplasm and the nucleus [70,74], Tax-interacting proteins were identified from both cellular compartments. Some of the cytoplasmic proteins included small GTPases and components of the cytoskeleton while some of the more interesting nuclear proteins included components of the SWl/SNF chromatin remodeling complex [73]. 

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