Correlation between Borna disease virus infection and schizophrenia

Abstract

Objective To explore correlation between Borna disease virus (BDV) infection and schizophrenia, as well as the clinical features of patients with BDV infection. Methods The p24 and p40 gene fragments of BDV in 86 patients with schizophrenia and 84 healthy donors were examined in peripheral blood mononuclear cells（PBMCs）and cerebrospinal fluid mononuclear cells nested with fluorescence quantitative nested reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (FQ-nRT-PCR).Meanwhile，β-actin in the specimens were detected by PCR as internal reference，and genetic testing and BDV antibody titer in patients with schizophrenia infected by BDV were detected. The clinical characteristics of patients infected by BDV were summarized. Results There were 10 patients with schizophrenia infected by BDV with the positive rate of 11.6% (10/86) and 13.4%(12/86) of BDV p24 and p40 in PBMCs which were significantly higher than that in healthy donors (χ2=9.26，P<0.05)，and the number of copies of BDV p24 and p40 in PBMCs were more than 102 kb/μl. The homology of the gene sequence of positive product was genetically relative to the virus strain BDV from horse.The clinical features in patients with BDV positive were mainly hallucination and delusion. Conclusion The results suggest that BDV infection possibly exists in some schizophrenia patients. The patients with BDV infection seem to have positive symptom. Key words: Schizophrenia; Borna disease virus; p40 gene; p24gene