Increased occurrence of Treponema spp. and double-species infections in patients with Alzheimer's disease.

Sci Total Environ

International Clinical Research Center, St. Anne's University Hospital Brno, Brno, Czech Republic; Loschmidt Laboratories, Department of Experimental Biology and RECETOX, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. Electronic address:

Published: October 2022

Although the link between microbial infections and Alzheimer's disease (AD) has been demonstrated in multiple studies, the involvement of pathogens in the development of AD remains unclear. Here, we investigated the frequency of the 10 most commonly cited viral (HSV-1, EBV, HHV-6, HHV-7, and CMV) and bacterial (Chlamydia pneumoniae, Helicobacter pylori, Borrelia burgdorferi, Porphyromonas gingivalis, and Treponema spp.) pathogens in serum, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and brain tissues of AD patients. We have used an in-house multiplex PCR kit for simultaneous detection of five bacterial and five viral pathogens in serum and CSF samples from 50 AD patients and 53 healthy controls (CTRL). We observed a significantly higher frequency rate of AD patients who tested positive for Treponema spp. compared to controls (AD: 62.2 %; CTRL: 30.3 %; p-value = 0.007). Furthermore, we confirmed a significantly higher occurrence of cases with two or more simultaneous infections in AD patients compared to controls (AD: 24 %; CTRL 7.5 %; p-value = 0.029). The studied pathogens were detected with comparable frequency in serum and CSF. In contrast, Borrelia burgdorferi, human herpesvirus 7, and human cytomegalovirus were not detected in any of the studied samples. This study provides further evidence of the association between microbial infections and AD and shows that paralleled analysis of multiple sample specimens provides complementary information and is advisable for future studies.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.157114DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

treponema spp
12
infections patients
8
alzheimer's disease
8
microbial infections
8
borrelia burgdorferi
8
pathogens serum
8
serum csf
8
compared controls
8
patients
5
increased occurrence
4

Similar Publications

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!