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Published on: July 26, 2011
Failure to detect Chlamydia pneumoniae in brain sections of Alzheimer's disease patients
J Gieffers1, E Reusche, W Solbach
1Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, Medical University of Lübeck, D-23538 Lübeck, Germany. gieffers@hygiene.mu-luebeck.de
Abstract:
A recent North American study detected Chlamydia pneumoniae in 17 of 19 brains of Alzheimer's patients and supposed a C. pneumoniae infection to be a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD). In this study, we analyzed paraffin-embedded tissue samples of 20 AD patients by nested PCR and immunocytochemistry with a panel of antichlamydial antibodies and could detect neither C. pneumoniae-specific DNA nor chlamydial antigens. From our data, the presence of C. pneumoniae in the brains of Alzheimer's patients is not a common phenomenon; an association remains questionable.
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