A simple and reliable method for the detection and quantitation of the human T-cell leukemia virus type-I provirus in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of seropositive blood donors.

Human T-cell leukemia virus type I (HTLV-I) antibody detection has been widely used to screen HTLV-I carriers. Sometimes, however, it gives false positive or negative results. A demonstration of the HTLV-I provirus from patients' peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) should, therefore, give the crucial evidence for them being HTLV-I carriers. We established a simple and reliable method using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to detect one molecule of HTLV-I provirus in 100 x 10(3) PBMC, during which internal control primers for the human beta-globin gene were also employed in the same reaction tube to check the success of the amplification reaction. We can thus easily avoid any false negative judgement and quantitate the HTLV-I provirus in PBMC simply by diluting the sample before PCR. One ml blood was enough for ten or more determinations by PCR. Analysis of seropositive blood from donors demonstrated a wide range for the number of HTLV-I provirus in PBMC. The method could conveniently be used for quantitating HTLV-I proviruses and following up HTLV-I carriers to study the pathophysiology and mode of HTLV-I transmission.