Los retrovirus en el Caribe

Abstract

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission patterns have varied from place to place, the most common pattern being one where transmission by homesexual and bisexual males predominated at first, with the virus subsequently spreading into the heterosexual community. However, on Saint Lucia the epidemic was initiated by heterosexual contacts on Saint Lucian laborers from Florida; in Bermuda nearly half the AIDS cases diagnosed have been in intravenous drug abusers; and in the Bahamas 59 percent of the AIDS patients have been heterosexual cocaine abusers (not intravenous drug abusers) identified with sexual promiscuity and prostitution as a result of drug abuse. Another human retrovirus whose modes of transmission resemble those of HIV is the human T-lymphotropic virus, type 1 (HTLV). Seroprevalences of this virus detected by surveys in various Caribbean countries have ranged from 2.3 percent in Trinidad and Tobago to 5.4 percent in Jamaica. (HTLV-I antibodies have been associated in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago with cases of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.) A study of HIV and HTLV-I infection patterns in 100 homosexually transmitted disease clinic in Trinidad showed 40 percent to be infected with HIV and 15 percent with HTLV-I. Six subjects were coinfected with both viruses. After four-and-a-half years of folowup, five (15 percent) of the 34 men infected only with HIV had progressed to AIDS, while