Abstract

Human T-lymphotropic virus 1 (HTLV-1) was the first recognized human retrovirus. Infection can lead to two main symptomatologies: adult T-cell lymphoma/leukemia (ATLL) and HTLV-1 associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP). Each manifestation is associated with distinct characteristics, as ATLL presents as a leukemia-like disease, while HAM/TSP presents as severe inflammation in the central nervous system, leading to paraparesis. Previous studies have identified molecules associated with disease development, e.g., the downregulation of Foxp3 in Treg cells was associated with increased risk of HAM/TSP. In addition, elevated levels of CXCL10, CXCL9, and Neopterin in cerebrospinal fluid also present increased risk. However, these molecules were only associated with specific patient groups or viral strains. Furthermore, the majority of studies did not jointly compare all clinical manifestations, and robust analysis entails the inclusion of both ATLL and HAM/TSP. The low numbers of samples also pose difficulties in conducting gene expression analysis to identify specific molecular relationships. To address these limitations and increase the power of manifestation-specific gene associations, meta-analysis was performed using publicly available gene expression data. The application of supervised learning techniques identified alterations in two genes observed to act in tandem as potential biomarkers: GBP2 was associated with HAM/TSP, and CD40LG with ATLL. Together, both molecules demonstrated high sample-classification accuracy (AUC values: 0.88 and 1.0, respectively). Next, other genes with expression correlated to these genes were identified, and we attempted to relate the enriched pathways identified with the characteristic of each clinical manifestation. The present findings contribute to knowledge surrounding viral progression and suggest a potentially powerful new tool for the molecular classification of HTLV-associated diseases.

Highlights

  • Human T-lymphotropic virus 1 (HTLV-1) belongs to the Retroviridae family and Deltaretrovirus genus, and presents tropism in the infection of T lymphocyte cells (Mirvish et al, 2011)

  • The expression of CD40LG allowed for the discrimination of individuals with adult T-cell lymphoma/leukemia (ATLL) with 100% accuracy

  • Expression levels of GBP2 were able to discriminate HTLV-1 associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP) samples with 84.2% classification accuracy, and controls with 100% accuracy, with a 15.8% misclassification rate occurring between HAM/TSP and controls (Figure 1A)

Read more

Summary

Introduction

Human T-lymphotropic virus 1 (HTLV-1) belongs to the Retroviridae family and Deltaretrovirus genus, and presents tropism in the infection of T lymphocyte cells (Mirvish et al, 2011). Two diseases are mainly associated with this infection: adult T-cell lymphoma/leukemia (ATLL) and HTLV-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP) (Gessain and Mahieux, 2012). ATLL is a lymphoma-like disease classified into four subtypes: acute, chronic, smoldering, and lymphoma (Shimoyama and members of The Lymphoma Study Group (1984–87)*, 1991). Developing this symptomatology results in a life expectancy less than 1 year in around 65% of affected individuals (Matutes, 2007), in addition to low documented chemotherapeutic response (Yamada et al, 2001). HAM/TSP is characterized as an inflammatory disease of the central nervous system (CNS), can progressively evolve to spastic paraparesis, and results in sensory disturbance in the lower extremities and bladder/bowel dysfunction (Nakagawa et al, 1995)

Methods
Results
Discussion
Conclusion
Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call