Tajima K
Gan To Kagaku Ryoho. 1983 Feb;10(2 Pt 2):690-8.
Adult T-cell leukemia (ATL) is prevalent in the rural coastal areas of southwestern part of Japan. The geographical distribution of persons with antibody to ATLV which seems to be the decisive causal agent of ATL is very similar to that of ATL patients. The positive rate of anti-ATLA among healthy inhabitants older than 50 years was 32% (21% in males and 39% in females) in Goto Islands in Nagasaki Prefecture. However, positive rates are only 15% in the age group of 30 to 49 years and 4% under 29 years in the same area. From the epidemiological analyses of the mode of anti-ATLA reactivity among married couples and family members with positive and negative anti-ATLA, two routes of transmission of ATLV were suspected. One route is from parents to children and another is the horizontal transmission from new family to woman after marriage. The environmental and socioeconomic factors which had changed remarkably after the World War II and may have influenced the characteristic distribution of ATLV carriers by age and sex in these areas are discussed as the modifying factors for ATLV infection and ATL manifestation from the epidemiological view point.
成人T细胞白血病（ATL）在日本西南部的沿海农村地区较为普遍。与似乎是ATL决定性致病因子的抗ATLV抗体呈阳性的人群的地理分布，与ATL患者的地理分布非常相似。在长崎县五岛列岛，50岁以上健康居民中抗ATLA的阳性率为32%（男性为21%，女性为39%）。然而，在同一地区，30至49岁年龄组的阳性率仅为15%，29岁以下年龄组的阳性率为4%。通过对夫妻和抗ATLA阳性及阴性家庭成员中抗ATLA反应模式的流行病学分析，怀疑存在两种ATLV传播途径。一种途径是从父母传给子女，另一种是婚后新家庭对女性的水平传播。从流行病学角度讨论了二战后显著变化且可能影响这些地区ATLV携带者按年龄和性别的特征分布的环境和社会经济因素，作为ATLV感染和ATL表现的调节因素。
