Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Ho, D D
• Rota, T R
• Schooley, R T
• Kaplan, J C
• Allan, J D
• Groopman, J E
• Resnick, L
• Felsenstein, D
• Andrews, C A
• Hirsch, M S

Titel

Isolation of HTLV-III from cerebrospinal fluid and neural tissues of patients with neurologic syndromes related to the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome

Ist Teil von

• The New England journal of medicine, 1985-12, Vol.313 (24), p.1493

Ort / Verlag

United States

Erscheinungsjahr

1985

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• We conducted virus-isolation studies on 56 specimens from the nervous system of 45 patients in order to determine whether human T-cell lymphotropic virus Type III (HTLV-III) is directly involved in the pathogenesis of the neurologic disorders frequently encountered in the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and the AIDS-related complex. We recovered HTLV-III from at least one specimen from 24 of 33 patients with AIDS-related neurologic syndromes. In one patient, HTLV-III was isolated from the cerebrospinal fluid during acute aseptic meningitis associated with HTLV-III seroconversion. HTLV-III was also isolated from cerebrospinal fluid from six of seven patients with AIDS or its related complex and unexplained chronic meningitis. In addition, of 16 patients with AIDS-related dementia, 10 had positive cultures for HTLV-III in cerebrospinal fluid, brain tissue, or both. Furthermore, we cultured HTLV-III from the spinal cord of a patient with myelopathy and from the sural nerve of a patient with peripheral neuropathy. These findings suggest that HTLV-III is neurotropic, is capable of causing acute meningitis, is responsible for AIDS-related chronic meningitis and dementia, and may be the cause of the spinal-cord degeneration and peripheral neuropathy in AIDS and AIDS-related complex.