Prevalence of antibodies to human immunodeficiency virus and to human T cell leukemia virus type I in transfused sickle cell disease patients.

The prevalence of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) antibody and the human T cell leukemia virus type I (HTLV-I) antibody was examined in 116 adults with sickle cell disease. Eighty-eight of them had received a mean of 18.6 transfusions of red blood cells between 1978 and 1985, and none was positive for the HIV antibody. Of 116 patients, 9 (7.8%) tested positive for HTLV-I antibodies. HTLV-I-positive patients were similar to those without HTLV-I antibody with respect to age, number of transfusions, and proportion of patients with greater than 40 transfusions. However, 3 of the 9 HTLV-I-positive patients came from West Africa or from the Caribbean, whereas this proportion was much lower (7/107) in the HTLV-I-negative group (x2, 7.564; P less than .01). Our analysis suggests that the risk of HIV infection in transfused sickle cell disease patients is low. Although HTLV-I antibodies in these patients may not be related to blood transfusions, it seems prudent to screen blood donors for HTLV-I infection.