Clinical features of human T-lymphotropic virus type 1 uveitis: a long-term follow-up

To investigate the clinical manifestations of human T-lymphotropic virus type-1 uveitis (HU), 112 HU patients who were followed up periodically for more than one year were retrospectively analyzed with respect to their ophthalmological and systemic complications. The gender ratio (female/male ratio) of the HU patients was 2.0 and the initial complications were foggy vision in 34.5%, ocular floaters in 33.3%, and blurred vision in 15.5%. As for the ocular symptoms, the majority (78.6%) of patients were classified as intermediate uveitis with vitreous inflammation. Recurrence of uveitis episodes was seen in one half of the patients (51.8%); 12 patients had more than six uveitis episodes. The interval of uveitis episodes varied from two weeks to 10 years. Nearly one half of the patients (43.8%) had ocular complications: e.g., cataract in 22 patients, persistent vitreous opacities in 17 patients, and glaucoma in 16 patients. Although the visual prognosis was essentially good, 11 patients had poor visual prognosis (<0.1). The causes of poor vision in these patients were cataract, cystoid macular edema, epiretinal membrane, and optic nerve atrophy. Of the 112 HU patients, two developed HTLV-I-associated myelopathy (TSP/HAM) after the onset of HU, while none developed adult T-cell leukemia. Sixteen HU patients had a previous history of Graves' disease and a past history of methimazole therapy, while Graves' disease was found in another HU patient only after HU onset and methimazole was not administered before the onset of HU. The present data of long-term follow-up indicate that (1) HU causes various ocular complications and its visual prognosis can be poor, (2) TSP/HAM can be induced even after the onset of HU, and (3) methimazole is not a risk factor of HU after Graves' disease.