Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024 Feb;52(1):243-247.
doi: 10.1007/s15010-023-02099-4. Epub 2023 Oct 9.

No evidence of an association of multiple sclerosis (MS) with Borna disease virus 1 (BoDV-1) infections in patients within an endemic region: a retrospective pilot study

Markus Bauswein  1 , Gertrud Knoll  2 , Barbara Schmidt  2 , André Gessner  2 , Bernhard Hemmer  3   4 , Martina Flaskamp  3
Affiliations

No evidence of an association of multiple sclerosis (MS) with Borna disease virus 1 (BoDV-1) infections in patients within an endemic region: a retrospective pilot study

Markus Bauswein et al. Infection. 2024 Feb.

Abstract

Background: Borna disease virus 1 (BoDV-1) causes rare human infections within endemic regions in southern and eastern Germany. The infections reported to date have been linked to severe courses of encephalitis with high mortality and mostly irreversible symptoms. Whether BoDV-1 could act as a trigger for other neurological conditions, is, however, incompletely understood.

Objectives and methods: In this study, we addressed the question of whether the presentation of a clinically isolated syndrome (CIS) or of multiple sclerosis (MS) might be associated with a milder course of BoDV-1 infections. Serum samples of 100 patients with CIS or MS diagnosed at a tertiary neurological care center within an endemic region in southern Germany and of 50 control patients suffering from headache were retrospectively tested for BoDV-1 infections.

Results: In none of the tested sera, confirmed positive results of anti-BoDV-1-IgG antibodies were retrieved. Our results support the conclusion that human BoDV-1 infections primarily lead to severe encephalitis with high mortality.

Keywords: Borna disease virus (BoDV-1); ELISA; Encephalitis; Multiple sclerosis (MS); Serology; iIFA.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests of a financial or personal nature.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
BoDV-1 screening ELISA. Serum samples of patients with headache (control, N = 50) and with clinically isolated syndrome (CIS)/multiple sclerosis (MS) (N = 100) were screened by a BoDV-1 IgG ELISA system using recombinant viral nucleocapsid (N), X or phosphoprotein (P). With the exception of 12 sera of the control cohort, which were tested negative, the ELISA was carried out twice to four-times for all serum samples in order to control for assay precision. Medians of sample-to-cut-off (S/CO) values were used for further analysis. All ELISA-reactive samples (S/CO > 1) were confirmed to be negative by an indirect immunofluorescence assay (iIFA). A shows medians of individual S/CO values. The dotted line represents the ELISA cut-off. Percentages of reactive samples are given. Under B absolute counts of reactive and negative samples are shown. Control and CIS/MS cohort were not significantly different based on Fisher´s exact test
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Allartz P, Hotop S-K, Muntau B, Schlaphof A, Thomé-Bolduan C, Gabriel M, et al. Detection of bornavirus-reactive antibodies and BoDV-1 RNA only in encephalitis patients from virus endemic areas: a comparative serological and molecular sensitivity, specificity, predictive value, and disease duration correlation study. Infection. 2023;5:1–13. doi: 10.1007/s15010-023-02048-1. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bauswein M, Eidenschink L, Knoll G, Neumann B, Angstwurm K, Zoubaa S, et al. Human infections with borna disease virus 1 (BoDV-1) primarily lead to severe encephalitis: further evidence from the seroepidemiological BoSOT study in an endemic region in Southern Germany. Viruses. 2023 doi: 10.3390/v15010188. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bjornevik K, Cortese M, Healy BC, Kuhle J, Mina MJ, Leng Y, et al. Longitudinal analysis reveals high prevalence of Epstein-Barr virus associated with multiple sclerosis. Science. 2022;375:296–301. doi: 10.1126/science.abj8222. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Coras R, Korn K, Kuerten S, Huttner HB, Ensser A. Severe bornavirus-encephalitis presenting as Guillain-Barré-syndrome. Acta Neuropathol. 2019;137:1017–1019. doi: 10.1007/s00401-019-02005-z. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Eisermann P, Rubbenstroth D, Cadar D, Thomé-Bolduan C, Eggert P, Schlaphof A, et al. Active case finding of current bornavirus infections in human encephalitis cases of unknown etiology, Germany, 2018–2020. Emerg Infect Dis. 2021;27:1371–1379. doi: 10.3201/eid2705.204490. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Substances

LinkOut - more resources