This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Isao Miyoshi, MD; Takashi Sawada; Yoshihito Iwahara, MD; Kazuyoshi Ishii, MD; Ichiro Kubonishi, MD; Hirokuni Taguchi, MD
Kochi (Japan) Medical School

JAMA. 1992;267(2):236.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.

—Human T-cell leukemia virus type I (HTLV-I) is known to be transmitted by blood transfusion,¹ breast feeding,² and sexual contact.³ To explore the possible transmission of HTLV-I by kissing, we have examined saliva samples from healthy carriers and from patients with adult T-cell leukemia using the polymerase chain reaction technique.

Methods.

—Our study included three seropositive healthy persons (one man and two women) and three adult patients with T-cell leukemia (two men and one woman) aged 37 to 66 years.

Their serum antibody titers ranged from 1:40 to 1:1280 by indirect immunofluorescence. Two seronegative healthy men aged 30 years served as controls. Saliva samples (10 to 20 mL) were collected with the aid of chewing gum. Saliva cells were washed twice with phosphate-buffered saline and used for DNA extraction. The polymerase chain reaction was performed under standard conditions⁴ using oligonucleotide primer pairs . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?