Serum concentration and genetic polymorphism in the 5'-untraslated region of VEGF is not associated with susceptibility to HTLV-I associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP) in HTLV-I infected individuals.

HTLV-I- associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP) is one outcome of human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) infection. It remains unknown why the majority of infected people remain healthy whereas only approximately 2-3% of infected individuals develop the disease. Recently, it has been reported that increased plasma concentrations of VEGF were significantly related to high ATL cell infiltration, and the viral transactivator Tax activates the VEGF promoter, linking the induction of angiogenesis to viral gene expression. To investigate whether VEGF promoter -634C/G single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and serum concentration of VEGF are associated with the development of HAM/TSP, we studied a group of 202 HAM/TSP patients, 202 asymptomatic HTLV-I seropositive carriers (HCs) and 108 seronegative healthy controls (NCs) in Kagoshima, Japan by using PCR-RFLP analysis. The serum concentration of VEGF was also compared among patients with HAM/TSP, ATL, HCs as well as with NCs. Our results indicate that both VEGF gene polymorphism and serum VEGF levels are not specifically associated with the risk of HAM/TSP in our cohort.