The expression of growth hormone and it's effection of activation in the T lymphocytes expressing HTLV-1 Tax
Objective To study the effects of the adult T cell leukemia virus type 1(HTLV-1) Tax protein on T lymphocytes self-reactive growth hormone(GH). Methods The expression of the growth hormone protein was measured by Western blot in TaxP and TaxN cells, which expresses HTLV-1 Tax or no. The location of growth hormone in the TaxP and TaxN cells were detected by LSCM(laser scanning confocal microscope). The level of growth hormone mRNA in TaxP and TaxN cells was measured by RT-PCR. The pGL2-GH-luc was transfected in TaxN and TaxP cells by Tfx-50-mediated transfection to assay transcriptional activity. The pNF-κB-luc, pAP-1-luc and pNFAT-luc was transfected into TaxP cells with pcDNA3.0-GH by Tfx50 to test bioactivity of the nuclear transcription factors. Results The mRNA and protein expression of GH could be promoted significantly by Tax. Relative to the TaxN cells, the transcriptional activity of GH was significantly increased about 6.37 times in TaxP cells(P＜0.05). Overexpression of GH can increase the activity of NF-κB about 1.7 times in TaxP cells (P＜0.05). Conclusion GH maybe involve in adult T-cell leukemia(ATL) through activating NF-κB. 
 
Key words: 
HTLV-1;  Tax protein;  T Lymphocytes;  Growth hormone;  NF-κB