Infection With HTLV-III/LAV and Transfusion-Associated Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
Serologic Evidence of an Association
- Harold W. Jaffe, MD;
- Mangalasseril G. Sarngadharan, PhD;
- Anthony L. DeVico;
- Lilian Bruch;
- Jane P. Getchell, DrPH;
- Vaniambadi S. Kalyanaraman, PhD;
- Harry W. Haverkos, MD;
- Rand L. Stoneburner, MD;
- Robert C. Gallo, MD;
- James W. Curran, MD
- From the Division of Viral Diseases, Center for Infectious Diseases, and the Division of Field Services, Epidemiology Program Office, Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta (Drs Jaffe, Getchell, Kalyanaraman, Haverkos, Stoneburner, and Curran); the Department of Cell Biology, Litton Bionetics, Inc, Kensington, Md (Dr Sarngadharan, Mr DeVico, and Ms Bruch); the New York City Department of Health (Dr Stoneburner); and the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Md (Dr Gallo).
Abstract
We studied patients with transfusion-associated acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and their blood donors for serologic evidence of infection with human T-cell lymphotropic virus type III/lymphadenopathyassociated virus with two enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays and a Western blot assay. All 19 patients with AIDS were seropositive by at least one test. In all 28 donor sets containing "high-risk" donors, at least one donor was seropositive by one or more tests. Of 255 donors not considered high risk, two (0.8%) were seropositive by all three tests. When 30 seropositive high-risk donors were evaluated a median of 29 months after donation, four (13%) had developed AIDS and eight (27%) had lymphadenopathy. Our findings support the hypothesis that human T-cell lymphotropic virus type III/lymphadenopathy-associated virus causes AIDS and indicate that seropositive high-risk donors may be at relatively high risk for developing AIDS or related conditions themselves.
(JAMA 1985;254:770-773)
Footnotes
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Reprint requests to AIDS Activity, Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, GA 30333 (Dr Jaffe).
