Viral Immunology Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20814, USA.
Bioinformatics Section, Information Technology & Bioinformatics Program, Division of Intramural Research (DIR), National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke/National Institute of Health, Bethesda, MD 20814, USA.
Neuron. 2020 Mar 18;105(6):1027-1035.e2. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2019.12.031. Epub 2020 Jan 23.
The interplay between viral infection and Alzheimer's disease (AD) has long been an area of interest, but proving causality has been elusive. Several recent studies have renewed the debate concerning the role of herpesviruses, and human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) in particular, in AD. We screened for HHV-6 detection across three independent AD brain repositories using (1) RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) datasets and (2) DNA samples extracted from AD and non-AD control brains. The RNA-seq data were screened for pathogens against taxon references from over 25,000 microbes, including 118 human viruses, whereas DNA samples were probed for PCR reactivity to HHV-6A and HHV-6B. HHV-6 demonstrated little specificity to AD brains over controls by either method, whereas other viruses, such as Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and cytomegalovirus (CMV), were detected at comparable levels. These direct methods of viral detection do not suggest an association between HHV-6 and AD.
病毒感染与阿尔茨海默病（AD）之间的相互作用一直是一个研究热点，但证明因果关系一直难以捉摸。最近的几项研究重新引发了关于疱疹病毒，特别是人类疱疹病毒 6（HHV-6）在 AD 中的作用的争论。我们使用（1）RNA 测序（RNA-seq）数据集和（2）从 AD 和非 AD 对照大脑中提取的 DNA 样本，在三个独立的 AD 大脑存储库中筛查 HHV-6 的检测。RNA-seq 数据针对来自超过 25000 种微生物的分类群参考物进行了病原体筛查，其中包括 118 种人类病毒，而 DNA 样本则针对 HHV-6A 和 HHV-6B 的 PCR 反应性进行了探测。通过这两种方法，HHV-6 对 AD 大脑的特异性都不如对照组，而其他病毒，如 EBV 和 CMV，以可比水平检测到。这些直接的病毒检测方法并不能表明 HHV-6 与 AD 之间存在关联。
