Although Ijichi et al. have shown that HTLV-2 has a preferential tropism for CD8+ T cells in vivo [128], unlike HTLV-1, both CD4+ T cells and CD8+ T cells are equally susceptible to HTLV-2 infection and subsequent viral gene expression, with a greater proviral burden observed in CD8+ T cells [123,124,129]. Here, CD8A is linked to HTLV-2 infection.