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Expression of interferon gamma in the brain of cats with natural Borna disease virus infection

2011; Elsevier BV; Volume: 141; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.vetimm.2011.02.014

1873-2534

Jonas Johansson Wensman, Carolina Ilbäck, Elina Hjertström, Anne-Lie Blomström, Malin Gustavsson, Karin Hultin Jäderlund, Bodil Ström Holst, Sándór Belák, Anna‐Lena Berg, Mikael Berg,

Virus-based gene therapy research

Borna disease virus (BDV) is a neurotropic, negative-stranded RNA virus, which causes a non-suppurative meningoencephalomyelitis in a wide range of animals. In cats, BDV infection leads to staggering disease. In spite of a vigorous immune response the virus persists in the central nervous system (CNS) in both experimentally and naturally infected animals. Since the CNS is vulnerable to cytotoxic effects mediated via NK-cells and cytotoxic T-cells, other non-cytolytic mechanisms such as the interferon (IFN) system is favourable for viral clearance. In this study, IFN-γ expression in the brain of cats with clinical signs of staggering disease (N=12) was compared to the expression in cats with no signs of this disease (N=7) by quantitative RT-PCR. The IFN-γ expression was normalised against the expression of three reference genes (HPRT, RPS7, YWHAZ). Cats with staggering disease had significantly higher expression of IFN-γ compared to the control cats (p-value ≤ 0.001). There was no significant difference of the IFN-γ expression in BDV-positive (N=7) and -negative (N=5) cats having clinical signs of staggering disease. However, as BDV-RNA still could be detected, despite an intense IFN-γ expression, BDV needs to have mechanisms to evade this antiviral immune response of the host, to be able to persist.