Early diagnosis of toxoplasmic encephalitis in AIDS patients by dot blot hybridization analysis

Central nervous system toxoplasmosis is a life-threatening infection with a mortality rate of higher than 60%. An early and rapid diagnosis is important for effective treatment of the disease. A new approach for detection of cerebral toxoplasmosis is described here. DNAs extracted from cells in cerebrospinal fluid samples (0.3 to 0.8 ml) of patients suspected of having cerebral toxoplasmosis were analyzed by a dot blot hybridization technique. A highly repetitive DNA sequence of Toxoplasma gondii (ABGTg4) was nonisotopically labelled with digoxigenin-dUTP and used as a specific DNA probe. Four of six patients analyzed gave positive signals in our hybridization assay. Two of them recovered with pyrimethamine-sulfadiazine, a drug recommended for treatment of toxoplasmosis. The other two patients with positive signals died soon after diagnosis. Patients with negative signals were found to suffer from mycobacterial infection (patient 1) or varicella-zoster virus infection (patient 6).