Persistent brain infection and disease reactivation in relapsing fever borreliosis

• Published in: Microbes and infection 2006-07, Vol.8 (8), p.2213-2219
• Main Authors: Larsson, Christer, Andersson, Marie, Pelkonen, Jenni, Guo, Betty P., Nordstrand, Annika, Bergström, Sven
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animals; Bacteremia; Bacterial diseases; Bacteriology; Biological and medical sciences; Borrelia - classification; Borrelia - isolation & purification; Borrelia duttonii; Borrelia infections; Borrelia/classification/isolation & purification; Brain - microbiology; Brain Chemistry; Brain Diseases - microbiology; CNS; Colony Count, Microbial; Disease Models, Animal; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Gene Expression Profiling; Human bacterial diseases; Immune evasion; Immune privileged sites; Immunosuppression; Infectious diseases; Ixodidae; Latency; Male; Medical sciences; Mice; Mice, Inbred C57BL; Microbiology; Miscellaneous; Relapsing Fever - microbiology; Reservoir; Serotyping; Tropical bacterial diseases
• ISSN: 1286-4579; 1769-714X; 1769-714X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.micinf.2006.04.007

Relapsing fever, an infection caused by Borrelia spirochetes, is generally considered a transient, self-limiting disease in humans. The present study reveals that murine infection by Borrelia duttonii can be reactivated after an extended time as a silent infection in the brain, with no bacteria appearing in the blood and spirochete load comparable to the numbers in an infected tick. The host cerebral gene expression pattern is indistinguishable from that of uninfected animals, indicating that persistent bacteria are not recognized by the immune system nor cause noticeable tissue damage. Silent infection can be reactivated by immunosuppression, inducing spirochetemia comparable to that of initial densities. B. duttonii has never been found in any host except man and the tick vector. We therefore propose the brain to be a possible natural reservoir of the spirochete. The view of relapsing fever as an acute disease should be extended to include in some cases prolonged persistence, a feature characteristic of the related spirochetal infections Lyme disease and syphilis.