Genome-wide analysis of gene expression profiles in individuals infected with the Human T-Lymphotropic virus Type 1 (HTLV-1) - test set

Infection with the human T lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) remains asymptomatic in the majority of carriers; however, some 5% develop a chronic inflammation of the central nervous system termed HTLV-1-associated myelopathy (HAM). It is not well understood how the virus triggers the onset of HAM after many years of clinical latency and importantly, what distinguishes hosts who develop the disease from those who remain asymptomatic. In a previous study we identified a 80-gene transcriptional signature of HAM based in the hypothesis that patients with HAM can be distinguished from asymptomatic HTLV-1 carriers (ACs) and uninfected subjects by their whole blood transcriptional profiles. In this study we wished to validate the 80-gene signature on an independent cohort comprising 17 asymptomatic HTLV-1 carriers (ACs), 10 patients with HAM and 8 uninfected healthy control subjects. Patients attending the HTLV-1 clinic at St Mary’s hospital in London, UK were classified according to their clinical status as asymptomatic HTLV-1 carriers (ACs, n=17), patients with HTLV-1-associated meylopathy (HAM, n=10) or uninfected control subjects (n=8). Three ml of blood were drawn into a Tempus tube (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA, USA). Total RNA was extracted, globin mRNA depleted and following cRNA generation samples were analysed on HUmanWG6 v3 Illumina BeadChip arrays.