Going Viral

Getting an Uncommon Virus into Common Dialogue

by Lorrie Klosterman and illustrations by Annie Internicola, April 27, 2010

In the world of the Internet, “going viral” can be a good thing, referring to something that rises above obscurity in the vast universe of uploaded content on wings of sudden popularity. One man in Kingston, Richard Engnath, is hoping to get that kind of attention, in the universe of public awareness, for a pair of real human viruses called HTLVs. That abbreviation stands for human T-lymphotropic virus, meaning a virus that has affinity for T-lymphocytes (T-cells), which are some of our essential immune cells.

HTLVs have been languishing in relative obscurity, at least in this country, since their discovery in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Two forms had been found: HTLV-1 and HTLV-2, and the first form was associated with leukemia. Then, in 1984, a related virus was discovered: Originally dubbed LAV (lymphadenopathy-associated virus) and also HTLV-3, that virus is now known as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)—the pathogen responsible for AIDS.

As HIV jumped into the limelight, its cousins were left in the dark. The HTLVs are, like HIV, retroviruses that carry viral RNA into cells and anchor it there permanently. But unlike HIV, which demolishes T-cells from within and sends immune cell numbers crashing, HTLVs don’t kill their host cells. Instead, they produce viral proteins with mixed influences on immune cell machinery, and people who test positive for HTLV-1 or HTLV-2 often are symptom free. But in an estimated 5 percent of cases, serious illness arises.


From Frying Pan to Fire
Engnath would like to have never met the HTLVs. But a suite of tenacious symptoms led him down the path to discovering them, and he has since become a one-man HTLV encyclopedia, and quite possibly the nation’s foremost expert on the subject.

His story begins decades ago, when he emerged relatively unscathed from a risky period of experimenting with injectable drugs—a newly emerging activity in the 1960s. Though he contracted hepatitis C, he’s amazed and grateful he didn’t get anything worse. But about five years ago, his luck ran out.

“I was drug free and smoke free by then,” he explains, “and I hadn’t gotten HIV. I had a friend I had known a long time, and I was thinking it might be nice to have a child with her. I knew she had been in jail, related to a drug habit, but she said she didn’t have HIV. So I took a chance and had unprotected sex with her.”

Within a few weeks, Engnath began having symptoms. “The first thing I got was swollen glands in my throat and neck, like a mild case of mumps, but it spread to other lymph nodes in my underarms, shoulders, and groin, and into other areas, and I got mild otitis, earache.” With those and other problems, Engnath wondered if he’d gotten HIV after all. But his HIV tests kept coming back negative while symptoms kept progressing. An infectious disease specialist told him it was just his imagination.