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Takashi Sawada; Hirokuni Taguchi, MD; Isao Miyoshi, MD
Kochi Medical School Kochi, Japan

Hiromichi Nakachi, MD
Okinawa Nambu Hospital Kochi, Japan

Takashi Nagayama, MD
Nagayama Obstetrics and Gynecology Clinic Kochi, Japan

JAMA. 1995;273(4):284.

	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.

—Milk-borne transmission of human T-lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) has been well established both epidemiologically and experimentally. Switching from breastfeeding to bottle-feeding reduced the virus infection rate to approximately one tenth, but a few bottle-fed infants still became infected with HTLV-1 through an as yet unidentified route.¹ Transplacental or intrauterine transmission of HTLV-1 has been a controversial subject because detection of HTLV-1 antigen or proviral DNA in umbilical cord blood does not necessarily lead to seroconversion of the children.^2-4 We now report that perinatal infection of HTLV-1 may account for the rare cases of seroconversion not related to breast-feeding.

We studied 17 HTLV-1 antibody—positive carrier mothers and their newborn infants: 10 of them were delivered by the vaginal route and the other seven by cesarean section at term. During pregnancy, the presence of HTLV-1 antibodies was checked by the particle agglutination method (titers 1:64 to . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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