A virus is a small infectious agent that replicates inside the living cells of other organisms.
Viruses can infect all types of life forms, from animals to plants to microorganisms,
and of course human beings.
Viruses are hard to fight as antibiotics cannot kill them off, and with deadly viruses, the
medical community is continually researching ways to fight them.
Recently, a virus that’s been around since the middle ages has been making headlines
as it infects growing numbers of people.
Welcome to this episode of The Infographics Show: HTLV-1 - An Ancient Virus that Nobody
is Fighting.
HTLV-1 is short for Human T-lymphotropic virus type 1 and is spread through contaminated
blood, unprotected sex, and breast milk.
It’s similar to HIV, and like HIV, there is no cure.
But unlike HIV, it takes a lot longer for the symptoms to appear, and is, therefore,
harder to detect.
Some people have been known to carry the virus for 30 years before any complications arose
that alerted them to being sick.
Between 1 and 5 percent of people who contract the virus will develop a fatal form of leukaemia
and most of those will die within 12 months of diagnosis.
HTLV-1 can also cause lung disease, kidney failure, and swelling of the spinal cord leading
to paralysis.
I’ve never even heard of HTLV-1, you might be saying to yourself?
So where and when did this menacing bug originate?
Well, actually, HTLV-1 is a very old virus and traces have been found in 1,500-year-old
Andean mummy DNA clones.
This suggests that the virus was carried with ancient Mongoloids to the Andes before the
Colonial era.
Today it infects up to 20 million people around the world, and is most common in sub-Saharan
Africa, Papua New Guinea, South America, Japan and central Australia, which has the highest
transmission rates in the world.
How do you catch HTLV-1?
Much like its cousin HIV, HTLV-1 can spread between sexual partners through unprotected
sex, by blood transfusions, by sharing needles, and it can also be spread from mother to child
during birth or breast-feeding.
Though it has been around for generations, the first detection and isolation of HTLV-1
was in 1979, and the discovery was published in 1980.
But this was dwarfed when HIV became a global epidemic in 1984, and so HTLV-1 was left relatively
unexplored.
And HTLV-1 has been neglected by the global research community ever since.
There is no path to a cure, as testing, research, and clinical treatment need to be conducted
before that will happen.
Testing currently takes 6 months, making it hard to effectively track the virus.
Japan is most advanced in treatment and it has reduced the transmission rate over time
by 80% through mass testing, and trialing drug treatments.
But maybe all this will soon change...A preliminary study carried out between 2015 and 2018, by
the Baker Institute for Heart and Diabetes in Alice Springs, Australia, has found that
40 percent of adults living in a remote region in Australia are infected with HTLV-1.
An area where less than 14 percent of the population was infected back in 1993.
And 30 percent of patients have diseases that may have resulted from HTLV-1.
Most of the infected adults are members of the indigenous community in Australia.
“This is probably the highest-ever reported prevalence in any population," said Dr. Graham
Taylor, a clinician and professor at Imperial College London.
These frightening findings have jolted the medical community into action, and at the
beginning of this month, an open letter, signed by 60 physicians, scientists and HTLV-1 advocates
from around the world, was published in the journal The Lancet, calling for the World
Health Organization to support the promotion of proven, effective transmission prevention
strategies against one of the most potent human carcinogens.
The letter stated that there is irrevocable evidence that the transmission of HTLV-1 would
be averted by the following actions: Using condoms when having sex; Avoiding the transfusion
and transplantation of infected blood and organs; Advising HTLV-1 antibody positive
mothers not to breastfeed their babies, or reducing duration to 3 – 6 months; using
sterile needles; and by educating healthcare professionals and the population about prevention
strategies.
The letter went on to suggest that the World Health Organization implement five strategies
to support these actions that will help prevent the spread of the deadly virus.
The 5 strategies are:
1.
Protect the sexually active population - Routine HTLV-1 testing in sexual health clinics to
be available to all attendees.
All people diagnosed will be followed up medically and monitored clinically, immunologically,
and virologically to be able to access treatment promptly.
Counsel & Monitor HTLV-1 positive patients, promote Condom usage, and support HTLV-1 positive
parents to test their children for HTLV-1.
2.
Protect blood and organ donors and recipients - Test donors and do not use products potentially
infected with HTLV-1.
Ensure that medical follow up and counseling are available to those infected.
3.
Protect mothers, babies and fathers - Routine antenatal care testing and advise against
breastfeeding by mothers who are HTLV-1 positive where safe, alternative methods of infant
feeding are available.
4.
Protect people who inject drugs - Promote HTLV-1 testing and provide free safe needles
through needle exchange programmes, together with promoting counseling and monitoring HTLV-1
positive patients.
5.
Support the population and health care providers – Provide access to up-to-date and evidence-based
HTLV-1 Fact Sheets and its related diseases, to help health care providers diagnose HTLV-1
and its diseases more often and in a timely fashion.
"We need The World Health Organization, to make noise on this, to be aware of it, to
make sure all health communities know about it, to push testing for it, and we need the
US National Institutes of Health, and others, to promote funding for it to make up for lost
years of poor funding," said Dr. Robert Gallo, co-founder and director of the Institute of
Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, whose laboratory was the
first to detect HTLV-1.
So, can the spread of HTLV-1 through central Australia be slowed, and could this epidemic
break out in other parts of the world?
From what we researched, it certainly seems evident that it can be controlled, as long
as the World Health Organization takes on board the advice being put forward by the
wider community of medical professionals.
But what are your thoughts on this disease?
Had you ever heard of it before?
Let us know in the comments!
Also, be sure to check out our other video called What is the Deadliest Substance on
Earth?!
Thanks for watching, and, as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe.
See you next time!