Oct. 15, 2015 (Nature) -- The possibility that Alzheimer’s disease has a microbial aetiology has been proposed by several researchers. Here, we provide evidence that tissue from the central nervous system of Alzheimer’s disease patients contain fungal cells and hyphae.
Fungal material can be detected both intra- and extracellularly using specific antibodies against several fungi. Different brain regions including external frontal cortex, cerebellar hemisphere, entorhinal cortex/hippocampus and choroid plexus contain fungal material, which is absent in brain tissue from control individuals.
Analysis of brain sections from ten additional Alzheimer’s disease patients reveals that all are infected with fungi. Fungal infection is also observed in blood vessels, which may explain the vascular pathology frequently detected in Alzheimer’s disease patients. Sequencing of fungal DNA extracted from frozen central nervous system samples identifies several fungal species.
Collectively, our findings provide compelling evidence for the existence of fungal infection in the central nervous system from Alzheimer’s disease patients, but not in control individuals.