FAILURE
TO DETECT BORNA DISEASE VIRUS p24 AND P40 mrna IN 60 AUTOPSY
BRAIN SAMPLES OF THE STANLEY FOUNDATION BRAIN COLLECTION
K. Ikeda*, S.
Haga, Y.Motoi, T. Aizawa, K. Arima. Department of Ultrastructure
and Histochemistry, Tokyo Institute of Psychiatry, Tokyo, Japan
There is evidence suggesting an
association of Borna Disease Virus (BDV) with certain psychiatric
disorders. To address the issues, several studies have been done
for detecting BDV-specific mRNA in autopsy brain tissues of
individuals with psychiatric disorders and controls. Thus far,
contradictory reports have been presented, covering the report of
the lack of detection and the report of very high prevalence of
BDV mRNA in samples from people with schizophrenia. We conducted
a similar study by nested RT-PCR for the brain samples of high
quality, with special precautions for both the false-positivity
and false-negativity in mind.
All the coded, autopsy brain
samples were provided from the Stanley Foundation Neuropathology
Consortium; tissues of each frontal and temporal cortex of 45
individuals with schizophrenia (15), bipolar disorder without
psychosis (15), and depression (15), and 15 controls. Total RNA
was extracted with Qiagen kit. To avoid the laboratory
contamination of BDV related nucleic acids, special cares were
paid for the processes of RNA extraction and the nested RT-PCR
assay. The RNA transcribed from the plasmid containing BDV p24 or
p40 sequence with an inserted foreign oligonucleotide (~50 nt),
P24 +@ or p40 + @ , was used as a positive control.
All the RNA samples of brain
tissues were capable to be amplified by nested RT-PCR for G3PDH
mRNA. Our nested RT-PCR assay detected reproducibly 500 copies of
p24+@ RNA and 100 copies of p40+@ RNA, showing the high sensitivity for detecting
BDV p24 or p40. No PCR products for p24 or p40 were observed in
any of the 120 samples.
The previous data including ours
on the detection of BDV in autopsy brain samples should be
reevaluated by the sensitive and careful nested RT-PCR assay.