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. 2021 Dec 7:8:645517.
doi: 10.3389/fvets.2021.645517. eCollection 2021.

Canine Meningoencephalitis of Unknown Origin-The Search for Infectious Agents in the Cerebrospinal Fluid via Deep Sequencing

Jasmin Nicole Nessler  1 , Wendy Karen Jo  2 , Albert D M E Osterhaus  2 , Martin Ludlow  2 , Andrea Tipold  1
Affiliations

Canine Meningoencephalitis of Unknown Origin-The Search for Infectious Agents in the Cerebrospinal Fluid via Deep Sequencing

Jasmin Nicole Nessler et al. Front Vet Sci. .

Abstract

Meningoencephalitis of unknown origin (MUO) describes a group of meningoencephalitides in dogs with a hitherto unknown trigger. An infectious agent has been suggested as one possible trigger of MUO but has not been proven so far. A relatively new method to screen for viral RNA or DNA is next-generation sequencing (NGS) or deep sequencing. In this study, a metagenomics analysis of the virome in a sample is analyzed and scanned for known or unknown viruses. We examined fresh-frozen CSF of 6 dogs with MUO via NGS using a modified sequence-independent, single-primer amplification protocol to detect a possible infectious trigger. Analysis of sequencing reads obtained from the six CSF samples showed no evidence of a virus infection. The inability to detect a viral trigger which could be implicated in the development of MUO in the examined population of European dogs, suggests that the current techniques are not sufficiently sensitive to identify a possible virus infection, that the virus is already eliminated at the time-point of disease outbreak, the trigger might be non-infectious or that there is no external trigger responsible for initiating MUO in dogs.

Keywords: brain; dog; immune-mediated; inflammatory; meningoencephalitis of unknown origin; unknown etiology.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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