tax/rex expression and p19 detection in samples from short-term PBMC cultures of ATL patients pre– and post–in vivo therapy with AZT/IFN. (A) tax/rex messenger RNA (mRNA) expression was detected by quantitative real-time PCR from cells collected after 7 days of short-term PBMC cultures of ATL patients. The results represent the mean values of triplicate samples expressed as relative tax/rex mRNA expression ± standard deviation (SD) in log scale, with respect to the untreated samples with least tax/rex expression. (B) tax/rex mRNA expression, detected and expressed as in panel A, referring to diagnostic samples from ATL patients (ATL 8, 9, 10). (C) p19 level (mean ± SD of quadruplicate samples, in picograms per milliliter) measured by antigen capture assay in pools of PBMC culture supernatants from each ATL patient or control HTLV-1–transformed cell line MT-2. (D) p19 level, detected and expressed as in panel C, referring to diagnostic samples from ATL patients (ATL 8, 9, 10).