Abstract
Because hairy cell leukemia (HCL) in the Japanese is not only rare but shows several atypicalities in the clinical and immunological features, the Japanese HCL is considered itself a variant of HCL. This study on Japanese HCL concerns with the aspect of possible retroviral involvement in view of the endemic prevalence of HTLV-I-associated ATL in Japan as well as the recent isolation of HTLV-II from another patient again with the T-cell variant of HCL.
Results of this study have demonstrated presence of antibodies to the structural peptides of HTLV-I and/or HTLV-II in sera from all 11 HCL patients surveyed. However, the antibody reaction in each case did not appear strong enough to derive from active infection by HTLV-I or HTLV-II. Instead, the results raised a possibility of a role by an unknown retrovirus capable of cross-reaction with HTLV-I and/or HTLV-II.
