Donna, I suspect what your client (who got the news from a blood
donation of her "LVT2" infection) may have is HTLV-11.   The
information to follow is mostly from Lawrence's 4th edition, page 211.

Human T-cell leukemia is the name of the disease.  There are 2 types
(1 and 11 are how they are noted).   Type 1 is "endemic in parts of
the West Indies, Africa, and Southwestern Japan."

From other, non specific sources in the past -  A virus causes or
contributes to sufferers developing this type of leukemia latter in
life (in the 30s or 40s I think).

Back to Lawrence - Type 1 is not passed through the placenta but is
passed through breastmilk.  Type 11 is "endemic in IV drug users and
their partners in the US".   She mentions a study of 21 seropositive
mothers   "The infant's PCRs (polymerase chain reactions) were all
negative from birth to 36 months, and serologic titers revealed gradula
disappearance of HTLV-1/11 andtibody.  They were all bottle fed."

The reference for that study is    J Infect Dis 166:892, 1992
by     Kaplan, Abrams, Shaffer et all
title is      Low risk of mother-to-child transmission of human T
        lymphotropic virus type 11 in non-breastfed infants.

Again, not from Lawrence but out of memory and I can't quote the source
- I have heard of pumping and home pasteurazaion being done with
HTLV-1.

I hope others will jump in to this discussion.  I have looked for for
more information on this subject and come up pretty dry.

Anyone out there from Japan?  How about more info from the milk
bankers?  Elizabeth Puzar mentioned HTLV briefly in her note of 5/5 on
NICU breastmilk error.  Do you know more Elizabeth?

Carla D'Anna (just north of Washington, DC)

PS, I will do a search on gopher/WWW and get back to the group with
results.