Adult T-cell leukemia by probable horizontal transmission from husband to wife.
A 60-year-old housewife was affected with adult T-cell leukemia (ATL) 10 years after her husband died of T-cell lymphoma, which was retrospectively diagnosed as ATL. She had never had a blood transfusion nor any indication of infection by human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) from her parents. The report suggested the wife to have developed ATL by horizontal transmission of HTLV-I from her husband 31 years after their marriage.