Expression of borna disease virus messages in clinical samples from patients with brain malignant tumors

Abstract

Borna disease virus (BDV), a nonsegmented, negative-sense, single-stranded RNA virus with an envelope, was initially isolated from horses with poliomyeloencephalitis. BDV is also believed to be linked with psychiatric disorders in humans based on higher prevalences of serum antibodies against BDV and viral RNA footprints in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of psychiatric patients, compared with those of controls. Here, we show that BDV RNA was identified in total RNA extracted directly from clinical samples of brain tumors. We found that two and three samples were positive using primers for the p24 and p40 regions, respectively, among grade 4 malignant tumors (glioblastomas) from 16 patients. There were no positive samples among lower grades of tumors (pilocytic or anaplastic astrocytomas) from 21 patients at either region. Of particular note is the detection of either a p40 or a p24 RNA in each of the tumor samples. Thus, we detected BDV RNA for the first time in the brains of immunosuppressed patients.