Oral Manifestations in Human T-lymphotropic Virus Infected Patients

Human T-lymphotropic virus (HTLV) was first detected and described in 1979, since then HTLV has been a major public health concern, because it is estimated that over 5-10 million people worldwide are infected by this virus.HTLV is classified into the family Retroviridae, subfamily Orthoretrovirinae, genus Deltaretrovirus, which has four types of human retroviruses, HTLV-1, HTLV-2, HTLV-3 and HTLV-4, being HTLV-1 the most prevalent and endemic in southwestern Japan, Caribbean, Iran, Latin American countries, as Brazil, central and southern regions of Africa.Otherwise, HTLV-2 is more prevalent among indigenous tribes of Central, North and South America.Recently, HTLV-3 and HTLV-4 were identified only in African continent (Vallinoto et al., 2022).