Infection of human synovial cells by human T cell lymphotropic virus type I. Proliferation and granulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor production by synovial cells.

Abstract

The present study was performed to clarify the relationship between human T cell lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) infection and chronic inflammatory arthropathy. To determine the ability of HTLV-I to infect synovial cells and the effect on synovial cell proliferation, synovial cells were cocultured with the HTLV-I-producing T cell lines (MT-2 or HCT-1). After coculture with HTLV-I-infected T cells, the synovial cells expressed HTLV-I-specific core antigens, and HTLV-I proviral DNA was detected from the synovial cells by polymerase chain reaction. These cocultured synovial cells with HTLV-I-infected T cells proliferated more actively than the synovial cells cocultured with uninfected T cells. This stimulatory effect of HTLV-

Inflammatory manifestations of HTLV-1 and their therapeutic options

“…High pVL was also detected in the synovial fluid of a HTLV-1 positive patient with RA [201]. Possibly, the migration of T lymphocytes into the articular space [202,203], attracted by viral antigens such as HTLV-1, which is synovial cell tropic [204], leads to the development and progression of arthritis and arthropathy. Transfection of a tax-expressing plasmid into synovial cell clones resulted in the same phenotype of increased proliferation and cytokine expression as exhibited by HTLV-1 provirus carrying and tax expressing synovial cell clones [200].…”

Human T Cell Leukemia Virus Type I-Infected Patients with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis and Graves’ Disease

“…It is now clear that HTLV-I-infected T cells are capable of producing various cytokines through the transactivation of cytokine genes by the Tax protein (27). HTLV-I-infected nonlymphoid cells have also been reported to express various types of cytokines (28,29). Therefore, we investigated the expression of inflammatory cytokines in FRTL-5 cells cocultured with MT-2 or CCRF-CEM cells by RT-PCR.…”

“…It was reported previously that HTLV-I could infect synovial cells, resulting in their active proliferation (28). Finally, to investigate the relation of thyroid cell proliferation and HTLV-I infection, the proliferative response of FRTL-5 cells was examined by cocultivation with MT-2 cells and compared with that of FRTL-5 cells cocultured with CCRF-CEM cells using the WST-8 assay as an index of cell number.…”

Increased proviral load in HTLV-1-infected patients with rheumatoid arthritis or connective tissue disease

“…HTLV-1 tropism for synovial cells has been confirmed in vitro [27]. Moreover, mice transgenic for Tax develop an inflammatory arthropathy resembling RA in humans [28].…”