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Updated: Aug 7, 2026

Metagenomic Next-Generation Sequencing of Cerebrospinal Fluid for the Detection of Central Nervous System Pathogens
Published on: April 17, 2026
Cerebrospinal fluid samples from patients with various neurological disorders have a transmissible cytotoxic activity
Francesca Beretti1, Paola Pietrosemoli, Anna Maria Bartoletti
1Centre for Diagnosis of Viral Diseases, Department of Laboratory Medicine, University Hospital of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy.
Abstract:
When inoculated into cell cultures to search for cytopathic viruses, six out of 384 cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples from patients with different neurological disorders proved to have a transmissible cytotoxic activity (TCA) not correlated to a conventional infectious agents. Properties shown by a TCA previously detected in the CSF sample of a patient with brain ischemia (Portolani et al., 2005) were shared by each of the newly isolated TCAs. We conclude that independently of the neurological clinical picture shown by the patient, the TCA detected in the CSF samples under study could have the same origin.
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