Chlamydophila pneumoniae Infection and Its Role in Neurological Disorders

Table 1

Studies demonstrating evidence or absence of C. pneumoniae in brain autoptic specimens from patients with Alzheimer disease.

Author, year	No. of autoptic AD brain specimens examined	C. pneumoniae DNA detection and confirmation methods	Results of ⋀PCR in AD brain Positive %	Results of PCR in control brain Positive %	Study of APOEe 4 gene expression
Balin et al. 1998 [48]	19	^§PCR, ^≠RT-PCR, ⋀⋀IHM, *EM, Culture	1790	15,2	Yes
Nochlin et al. 1999 [49]	13	^†PCR, IHM	0 -	0 -	Not done
Gieffers et al. 2000 [50]	20	°PCR, IHM	0 -	0 -	Not done
Ring and Lyons 2000 [51]	15	°°PCR, Culture	0 -	0 -	Not done
Taylor et al. 2002 [52]	10	^•PCR, IHM	0 -	0 -	Not done
Wozniak et al. 2003 [53]	4	°°°PCR	0 -	0 -	Not done
Gérard et al. 2006 [54]	27	^‡PCR, RT-PCR, IHM, EM, Culture	2580	311	Yes

⋀PCR, polymerase chain reaction; ^≠RT-PCR, Reverse transcriptase PCR; ⋀⋀IHM, immunoistochemistry; *EM, electron microscopy; ^§primers targeting the 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene (Gaydos et al., J Clin Microbiol 1992; 30: 796–800) and the chlamydial major outer membrane protein (MOMP) gene (ompA) (Perez-Melgosa et al., Infect Imm 1991; 59: 2195–9); ^†PCR with seminested primer amplifying C. pneumoniae-specific DNA sequences of 437 bp (Kuo et al, J Infect Dis 1993; 167: 841-9); °nested PCR (Maass et al., Atherosclerosis 1998; 140: S25–30); °°Primers targeting the MOMP gene (Perez-Melgosa et al., 1991; Infect Imm 1991; 59: 2195–9) ^•PCR using the 76 kDa protein gene [47], the rpoB gene encoding the RNA polymerase beta subunit (Ouchi et al., J Med Microbiol 1998; 47: 907–13), and the pan-Chlamydia primers targeting the 16S ribosomal RNA gene in Chlamydia and Chlamydia-like organisms (Ossewaarde et al., Microbiology 1999; 145: 411–17); °°°PCR with primer targeting the 16SrRNA gene (J Clin Microbiol 1992; 30: 796–800); ^‡PCR-multiple assays targeting the Cpn1046 gene (aromatic amino acid hydroxylase) and Cpn0695 (MOMP)[54].