No evidence of vertical transmission of HTLV-I in bottle-fed children

The most frequent pathway of vertical transmission of HTLV-I is breast-feeding, however bottle fed children may also become infected in a frequency varying from 4 to 14%. In these children the most probable routes of infection are transplacental or contamination in the birth canal. Forty-one bottle-fed children of HTLV-I seropositive mothers in ages varying from three to 39 months (average age of 11 months) were submitted to nested polymerase chain reaction analysis (pol and tax genes). 81.5% of the children were born by an elective cesarean section. No case of infection was detected. The absence of HTLV-I infection in these cases indicates that transmission by transplacental route may be very infrequent.

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: BITTENCOURT,Achiléa L, SABINO,Ester C., COSTA,Maria Cecília, PEDROSO,Celia, MOREIRA,Licia
Format: Digital revista
Language:English
Published: Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo 2002
Online Access:http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0036-46652002000200002
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