The interplay between viral infection and Alzheimer's disease (AD) has long been an area of interest, but proving causality has been elusive. Several recent studies have renewed the debate concerning the role of herpesviruses, and human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) in particular, in AD. We screened for HHV-6 detection across three independent AD brain repositories using (1) RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) datasets and (2) DNA samples extracted from AD and non-AD control brains. The RNA-seq data were screened for pathogens against taxon references from over 25,000 microbes, including 118 human viruses, whereas DNA samples were probed for PCR reactivity to HHV-6A and HHV-6B. HHV-6 demonstrated little specificity to AD brains over controls by either method, whereas other viruses, such as Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and cytomegalovirus (CMV), were detected at comparable levels. These direct methods of viral detection do not suggest an association between HHV-6 and AD.

中文翻译：

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阿尔茨海默病病例和多个队列对照中人类疱疹病毒 6 的检测。


病毒感染与阿尔茨海默病 (AD) 之间的相互作用长期以来一直是人们感兴趣的领域，但证明因果关系一直难以捉摸。最近的几项研究重新引发了关于疱疹病毒，特别是人类疱疹病毒 6 (HHV-6) 在 AD 中的作用的争论。我们使用 (1) RNA 测序 (RNA-seq) 数据集和 (2) 从 AD 和非 AD 对照大脑中提取的 DNA 样本，在三个独立的 AD 大脑存储库中筛选 HHV-6 检测。 RNA-seq 数据根据来自超过 25,000 种微生物（包括 118 种人类病毒）的分类单元参考筛选病原体，同时探测 DNA 样本对 HHV-6A 和 HHV-6B 的 PCR 反应性。通过这两种方法，HHV-6 与对照相比，对 AD 大脑几乎没有特异性，而其他病毒，如 Epstein-Barr 病毒 (EBV) 和巨细胞病毒 (CMV)，检测到的水平相当。这些直接的病毒检测方法并不表明 HHV-6 与 AD 之间存在关联。