Background: Presence of HTLV-I infection in the northeastern of Iran has been suggested by some studies.
Method: To find out more about prevalence and risk factors of HTLV-I and HTLV-II in Mashhad, 1678 healthy individuals including 763 men and 915 women with mean of 29.1 ± 18.5 years in all the twelve geographical regions of the city, were selected randomly by multistage cluster sampling. ELISA was used to screen for antibodies and the positive samples were tested by PCR.
Results: Overall prevalence of HTLV-I infection was 2.12% (1.6% and 2.5% for men and women, respectively). HTLV-II infection was observed in only two cases as co-infection with HTLV-1. HTLV Infection was associated with age (p< 0.001), marital status (p< 0.001), literacy (p= 0.015), family size (p< 0.001), job (p= 0.02) and history of blood transfusion (p= 0.009), surgery (p= 0.002), Hijama (p= 0.011), hospitalization (p= 0.004) and ABO blood group (p= 0.032). In logistic regression analysis, age was the only variable that had significant association with the infection (p= 0.005). In people older than 55, HTLV Infection in women was more prevalent than men (13.0% and 3.5% respectively, p= 0.021).
Conclusion: The high rate of HTLV-I infection in the general population of Mashhad is an important public health concern..