This site is intended for healthcare professionals

Go to /sign-in page

You can view 5 more pages before signing in

Oncoviruses

Last reviewed dd mmm yyyy. Last edited dd mmm yyyy

Authoring team

There are two retroviruses in the oncoretroviridae group which cause human disease; these are type I and type II human T-cell lymphotropic virus (HTLV).

HTLV was the first human retrovirus to be isolated. It is spread by sexual contact, from mother to child and through contaminated blood products.

HTLV-I is endemic in southern Japan, equatorial Africa and South America.

HTLV is able to avoid clearance by the host's immune system by remaining in the latent state, as a provirus within the host's genome.

 


Related pages

Create an account to add page annotations

Annotations allow you to add information to this page that would be handy to have on hand during a consultation. E.g. a website or number. This information will always show when you visit this page.