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As the replication pattern of leukemogenic PTLVs possesses a strong pathogenic impact, we investigated HTLV-2 replication in vivo in asymptomatic carriers belonging into 2 distinct populations infected by the same HTLV-2b subtype. They include epidemically infected American blood donors, in whom HTLV-2b has been present for only 30 years, and endemically infected Bakola Pygmies from Cameroon, characterized by a long viral endemicity (at least few generations). In blood donors, both the circulating proviral loads and the degree of infected cell proliferation were largely lower than those characterizing asymptomatic carriers infected with leukemogenic PTLVs (HTLV-1, STLV-1). This might contribute to explain the lack of known link between HTLV-2b infection and the development of malignancies in this population. In contrast, endemically infected individuals displayed high proviral loads resulting from the extensive proliferation of infected cells. The route and/or the duration of infection, viral genetic drift, host immune response, genetic background, co-infections or a combination thereof might have contributed to these differences between endemically and epidemically infected subjects. As the clonality pattern observed in endemically infected individuals is very reminiscent of that of leukemogenic PTLVs at the pre-leukemic stage, our results highlight the possible oncogenic effect of HTLV-2b infection in such population.

Abstract: Here we investigate the mechanisms by which HTLV-1 infection prevents the cell death of CD8+ T cells in vivo. We show that upon natural infection, cloned CD8+ but not CD4+ cells from patients without malignancy become resistant to Fas-mediated cell death and acquire an antiapoptotic transcriptome that includes the overexpression of cIAP-2 and c-FLIP(L). CD8+ lymphocyte-restricted cIAP-2 overexpression correlates with resistance to Fas-mediated apoptosis and depends on tax expression via NF-KappaB. In contrast, in the same CD8+ cells, the HTLV-1-dependent overexpression of c-FLIP(L) does not correlate with resistance to Fas-mediated cell death nor with tax expression. In the present model, infected CD8+ clones are the only cell subtype in which cIAP-2 expression correlates with resistance to cell death. These results support a role for Tax-dependent cIAP-2 expression in preventing the death of naturally infected CD8+ cells and thereby in their clonal expansion in vivo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]