Human T-Cell Lymphotropic Virus (HTLV-1) infection in the Afghanistan: Review of a forgotten epidemic
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Mohammad Reza Mohammadi,1,* Hamida Musawi,2
1. Department of Bacteriology, School of Medicine, Tarbiat Modares University,Tehran,Iran
2. Mia san Hospital, Bavaria , Germany
- Introduction: Background: The distribution of HTLV affects nearly 7 million people around the world. The prevalence of this infection varies among different geographic regions as well as populations.
Objective: The objective of this revue was to present the epidemiological data of HTLV infection in the Afghanistan
- Methods: This revue consisted in cataloging various studies, published articles and summaries presented in scientific conference having as subject of interest the HTLV in the Afghanistan. The search was done using MEDLINE/PubMed, Embase (Via Ovid), Cochrane, Google scholar, and POPLINE. To identify the articles from the different sources, the search was carried out using the following keywords: -HTLV, HTLV infection, HTLV epidemiology, kabul, Afghanistan-. Publications were selected according to the relevance of the methodology as well as the results and the representativeness of the samples
- Results: In 2010 and 2011, conducted a study in the city of kabul on 32 patients screened for chronic symmetrical spastic paraparesis of which 25 (96%) had anti-HTLV-1 markers in their serum. was 102 sera samples collected in 2002 from a population of kabul , 14 (13.7%) were positive for HTLV-2. a study in kabul in 2003 and 2 on 1162 patients, 36 (3.1%) were positive for anti-HTLV-1 markers.
- Conclusion: This analysis shows that HTLV infection was of interest and has lost interest today. Its prevalence in this decade was between 1% and 15% in the Afghanistan. It was higher than that of HIV during the same period.
- Keywords: HTLV, Infection, Epidemiology, Afghanistan
