Borna Virus and suicide

[Kathryn Carbone]

I've worked on Borna Disease virus for ten years.  Recently we published 
a paper in Psychiatry Research (1995) linking antibodies to BDV and 
Schizophrenia.  Other work has been published linking antibodies to BDV 
and affective disorders (manic depression/major depression).

The paper by Bode et al from Berlin (Nature Medicine, 1995) has reported 
finding BDV sequences in 
patients with psychiatric disease using an RT-PCR technique we published 
in 1993 (when we first reported that BDV was recoverable from peripheral 
blood 
white blood cells of infected rats; J. Neuroimmunology).  The data in the 
Bode paper support ONLY 
that BDV-like sequences were found in samples from patients with psychiatric 
disease and are NOT such that one can conclude that infection with BDV 
was the CAUSE of the disease (it is ONLY an association at this point).

Problem is, much of the "clinical" work with BDV and human disease has 
been reported in clinically meaningful ways.  We tried to correct some of this
 in our recent paper, and were 
surprised that, with MUCH more stringent clinical research criteria, we 
also found an association with antibodies to BDV and human psychiatric 
disease.  But up to now, the reports have lacked appropriate controls, 
make NO mention of SES/age/sex/race/disease course evaluations of 
patients and appropriate matching to controls etc. etc. etc.  AND the 
serological tests used, up to this point, was a rather subjective, 
non-specific test.  We prefer to use, and reported data based on, a Western 
blot techinique we developed in our laboratory.

In sum, this area is VERY interesting, since BDV is probably the 
prototypical virus in a new class of viruses.  However, I'd take all the 
current work linking BDV to human disease with a grain of salt---BDV 
probably DOES infect humans, but I'm not convinced we have any meaningful 
clinical data supporting this conclusively--yet.

Kathryn M. Carbone MD
Associate Professor of Medicine
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
kcarbone at welchlink.welch.jhu.edu

On Mon, 8 May 1995, Bronwyn Harrop wrote:

> Has anyone heard of this, a newspaper article said that it was the cause
> of severe depression and suicides as researched by Berlin's Free
> university.
> 
> Is there anywhere that I can find more substantial information?
> 
>