Longitudinal analysis in 3 HLA-A*0201⁺ patients with HAM/TSP.

The x-axis indicates the date when the PBMCs were obtained. (A) HTLV-1 proviral load (♦) measured by a quantitative real-time PCR (copy/10⁴ PBMCs). (B) Frequency of HTLV-1 Tax 11-19–specific CD8⁺ T cells in CD8⁺ cell population (●), which were measured as shown in Figure 1 (%). (C) Degeneracy of T-cell recognition in HTLV-1 Tax 11-19–specific CD8⁺ T cells at each time point. Frequencies of T cells that recognized either cognate Tax 11-19 peptide or APL were measured as shown in Figure 1. The relative CD8⁺ T-cell frequency to APL against that to cognate Tax 11-19 was calculated. The y-axis indicates the relative percentage (%). (D) MFI of IFN-γ–FITC produced by T cells responding to cognate Tax 11-19 or APL (unit).