Incidence of antibody to HTLV‐I is not increased in Japanese MS patients

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Abstract
To examine the association between MS and anti-human T-cell lymphotropic virus-I (HTLV-I) antibody, we studied serum and CSF antibody to HTLV-I in 27 Japanese MS patients by an indirect immunofluorescence method sensitive and specific enough to detect carriers of HTLV-I. The antibody was detected in 3 of 27 MS patients (11.1%), in 4 of 48 patients (8.3%) with other neurologic diseases, and in 8.3% of 2,500 healthy blood donors. There was no significant difference in the incidence between the three groups. The titer of the antibody was low in CSF when compared with that in serum in all seropositive MS patients. Fluctuations in the CSF antibody titer were not observed in any of 14 MS patients sampled repeatedly.