Prevalence of HTLV-1 antibody among major thalassemic patients in Gorgan (South East of Caspian Sea)

In this study, the prevalence of HTLV-1 infection among the thalassemic patients was investigated. 181 thalassemiC patients whom referred to Talghani hospital during, Oct. 2004-Sep. 2005 were participated in this study. HTLV antibody was determined using ELISA technique. In this procedure (Diapron laboratory kit) HTLV, positive samples tested by HTLV-1 western blot (kit 2.4) to confirm, ELISA positive samples and also to detect the HTLV types, From 181 thalassemic patients, 93 (51.4%) were males. The age rate of these ranged 1-25 years, (mean of 14.11±6.5). Of these subjects 169 patients (93.4%) were received packet cell at least one unite per month 28(14.9%) of subjects were HTLV positive, while only 4.4% of them were confirmed by western blot and also for contamination with type-1 virus infection. Contamination with this virus increased, as the patients were getting older. The findings derived from this study indicated that among the thalassemic patients in Gorgan there were cases with HTLV-1, infection that was correlated with the other part of the country. It is therefore concluded, that further comprehensive studies are required to identify infected blood donations by blood donors in Gorgan. © 2008 Asian Network for Scientific Information