Human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I infects eccrine sweat gland epithelia

Human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) is known to be associated with several non-neoplastic inflammatory disorders such as HTLV-I-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis, arthropathy, uveitis and lymphadenitis, in addition to neoplastic adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATLL). A strong relation between HTLV-I infection and Sjögren's syndrome (SS) has been reported, and impaired sweating in SS is well known. We have often encountered dry skin in patients with ATLL. On the basis of these observations, we aimed to determine whether HTLV-I infection is present in isolated sweat glands. Eccrine gland epithelia were isolated from full thickness skin biopsies from 8 HTLV-I-seropositive and 7 seronegative individuals using dispase in Eagle's minimum essential medium supplemented with 13% fetal calf serum. We detected HTLV-IpX sequences in samples of eccrine sweat gland epithelia from 4 samples of the 8 seropositive individuals using nested polymerase chain reaction, but all 7 samples from the seronegative donors had no signal corresponding to the sequence. Our results were confirmed by dot blot hybridization. Our results suggest that eccrine epithelium is one of the target organs of HTLV-I infection.