The Journal of Medical Microbiology, Vol 38, Issue 5 328-336, Copyright © 1993 by Society for General Microbiology
Polymerase chain reaction amplified HTLV-I, HIV-1 and HIV-2 DNA fragments in subjects with mixed retroviral infections
V. Kolesnitchenko, G. Agius, J. F. Zagury, K. Laaroubi, A. Achour, M. Castets and D. Zagury
Laboratoire de Physiologie Cellulaire, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France.
Serum and peripheral blood mononuclear cells from eight patients from the
Ivory Coast with positive screening test results for retroviral infections
were studied by serology (ELISA, Western blot (WB), synthetic peptide
test), cell co-culture, and polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Two HIV-2
infections with indeterminate interpretation on HIV-1 WB were detected, two
were clear dual HIV-1/HIV-2 infections, three were ambiguous mixed
HIV-1/HIV-2 infections, and one was a triple retroviral infection by
HTLV-I, HIV-1 and HIV-2. Four slow/low HIV-1 strains were isolated at the
expense of HTLV-I and HIV-2 strains. The ELISA tests were found to be very
sensitive. Indeterminate WB interpretations were frequent (HTLV-I, four;
HIV-1, three; HIV-2, two). PCR provided clear evidence of multiple
retroviral infections in three cases and enabled interpretation of
indeterminate WB samples in three cases. One sample presented a puzzling
pattern with positive PCR results for HIV-1 and HIV-2 associated with
negative or indeterminate serological results. Thus, our data emphasise the
need to analyse serological as well as virological markers to gain better
insight on mixed retroviral infections, especially in endemic areas such as
West Africa.
