These results suggest that the observed increase in virus-specific CD4+ T cells in HAM/TSP patients, which may contribute to CD4+ T cell-mediated antiviral immune responses and to an increased risk of HAM/TSP, was not simply due to the rapidly growing HTLV-1-infected CD4+ T cells but was the result of in vivo selection by specific MHC-peptide complexes, as observed in freshly isolated HLA-A*0201/Tax11-19 tetramer+CD8+ T cells [95] and muscle-infiltrating cells from HAM/TSP patients and HTLV-1-infected polymyositis patients [96]. Here, HLA-A is linked to tropical spastic paraparesis.