Figure 4.

HTLV-1 Tax11–19-specific CD8⁺ T cells accumulate in CSF. CSF and peripheral blood were obtained from a HAM/TSP patient (H1) the same day and analyzed using Tax-A2/Ig. Cells (9 × 10⁴) were obtained from CSF and stained using Tax/A2-Ig and Gag/A2-Ig in combination with mouse anti-human CD8-FITC as described in Fig. 3. Freshly obtained, Ficoll-purified PBLs were analyzed in parallel. Of the CD8⁺ T cells in CSF, 23.7% were Tax specific and only 9.4% of the CD8⁺ T cells from peripheral blood. No significant signal was seen using Gag-A2/Ig (<0.1%) (A). CD4/CD8 analysis showed that the ratio of CD4:CD8 was 1.1 in the CSF and 1.5 in the PBLs due to a higher number of CD8⁺ T cells in CSF (B).