Brain Microbiota in Huntington ’s Disease Patients

One of the most important challenges facing medical science is to better understand the cause of neuronal pathology in neurodegenerative diseases. Such is the case for Huntington’s disease (HD), a genetic disorder primarily caused by a triplet expansion in the Huntingtin gene (HTT). Although aberrant HTT is expressed from embryogenesis, it remains puzzling as to why the onset of disease symptoms manifest only after several decades of life. In the present study, we investigated the possibility of microbial infection in brain tissue from patients with HD, reasoning that perhaps mutated HTT could be deleterious for immune cells and neural tissue, and could facilitate microbial colonization. Using immunohistochemistry approaches, we observed a variety of fungal structures in the striatum and frontal cortex of seven HD patients. Some of these fungi were found in close proximity to the nucleus, or even as intranuclear inclusions. Identification of the fungal species was accomplished by next-generation sequencing (NGS). Interestingly, some genera, such as Ramularia, appeared unique to HD patients, and have not been previously described in other neurodegenerative diseases. Several bacterial species were also identified both by PCR and NGS. Notably, a curved and filamentous structure that immunoreacts with anti-bacterial antibodies was characteristic of HD brains and has not been previously observed in brain tissue from neurodegenerative patients. Prevalent bacterial genera included...
Source: Frontiers in Microbiology - Category: Microbiology Source Type: research