Failure to detect Chlamydia pneumoniae in the late-onset Alzheimer's brain

Epidemiological studies have yet to identify a single cause for the most common late-onset form of Alzheimer's disease. The common respiratory pathogen Chlamydia pneumoniae recently has been implicated as a risk factor for this form of Alzheimer's disease. Were this true, there would be a dramatic shift in current paradigms of Alzheimer's disease research and treatment. In the absence of published confirmation, we obtained postmortem brain tissue from late-onset Alzheimer's disease patients (n = 15) and representative controls (n = 5) and extracted DNA from up to six separate brain regions in each instance, including those areas particularly relevant to Alzheimer's disease neuropathology. Each sample of DNA (n = 101) was assayed five times or more for the presence of C. pneumoniae DNA using a nested-PCR protocol targeting a species-specific gene sequence coding for the major outer membrane protein of this organism. We were unable unequivocally to detect C. pneumoniae in any of the 101 samples tested by PCR and failed to culture the organism from tissue samples. We conclude that C. pneumoniae is neither strongly nor uniquely associated with the neuropathology seen in late-onset Alzheimer's disease.