High prevalence of HTLV-I and HTLV-II among blood donors in Argentina: a South American health concern.

After an HTLV-I endemic area was discovered in Jujuy, a northwestern province in Argentina, to detect other possible foci of HTLV-I/II we started in 1997 a multicentric study to estimate the seroprevalence of HTLV-I/II including blood banks from different regions of the country. Out of 123,233 samples from nine different provinces, 68 proved seropositive with a final prevalence of 0.05% (95% CI = 0.

[Prevalence of HTLV-I/II infection among blood donors in Santa Fe Province, Argentina].

Subsequent to the National Epidemiologic Surveillance Program developed in 1997 by the National AIDS Program, anti-HTLV-I/II antibodies among blood donors in Santa Fe Province started to be detected. On the basis of this initial finding, it was regarded of interest to evaluate the true HTLV-I/II seroprevalence in this population during a four-year survey. Thus, from 1997 up to 2002, 9425 samples were studied from 17 out of the 19 provincial departments.