Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assay for rapid and accurate confirmatory diagnosis of HTLV-1/2 infection
Viruses; 12 (981), 2020
Publication year: 2020
Laboratory diagnosis of human T-lymphotropic viruses (HTLV) 1 and 2 infection is
performed by serological screening and further confirmation with serological or molecular assays.
Thus, we developed a loop-mediated isothermal nucleic acid amplification (LAMP) assay for the
detection of HTLV-1/2 in blood samples. The sensitivity and accuracy of HTLV-1/2 LAMP were
defined with DNA samples from individuals infected with HTLV-1 (n = 125), HTLV-2 (n = 19),
and coinfected with HIV (n = 82), and compared with real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR)
and PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP). The overall accuracy of HTLV-1/2 LAMP
(95% CI 74.8–85.5%) was slightly superior to qPCR (95% CI 69.5–81.1%) and similar to PCR-RFLP
(95% CI 79.5–89.3%). The sensitivity of LAMP was greater for HTLV-1 (95% CI 83.2–93.4%) than
for HTLV-2 (95% CI 43.2–70.8%). This was also observed in qPCR and PCR-RFLP, which was
associated with the commonly lower HTLV-2 proviral load. All molecular assays tested showed
better results with samples from HTLV-1/2 mono-infected individuals compared with HIV-coinfected
patients, who present lower CD4 T-cell counts. In conclusion, HTLV-1/2 LAMP had similar to
superior performance than PCR-based assays, and therefore may represent an attractive alternative
for HTLV-1/2 diagnosis due to reduced working time and costs, and the simple infrastructure needed.