We tested purified preparations of brain tissue from 39 patients with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker syndrome, or kuru, and from 32 patients with a variety of nonspongiform degenerative diseases, with the use of Western blots against an antiserum to a similarly purified fraction made from scrapie-infected hamster brain. Positive reactions occurred in 81 percent of the 31 specimens from the patients with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (and in all of the 7 specimens that were stored frozen for less than one year), in 3 of the 4 specimens from the patients with kuru, in 3 of the 4 specimens from the patients with Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker syndrome, and in none of the specimens from the patients with other neurologic degenerative disorders, including familial or sporadic Alzheimer's disease; dementia associated with myoclonus, motor neuron disease, or parkinsonism; and acquired-immunodeficiency-syndrome encephalopathy. Immunologic testing has thus begun to provide a useful and rapid adjunct to neuropathological examinations and animal-transmission experiments for the diagnosis of the spongiform encephalopathies.
Crude preparations of Taenia solium cysticerci were partially purified by a chromatofocusing procedure to obtain antigenic fractions that were shown to be active in the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) with known positive cysticercosis sera. Evaluation of this antigen in the ELISA serodiagnosis of human cysticercus infection showed an 80% detection of clinically typical cysticercosis patients from West New Guinea, and gave no false positive results in healthy control subjects from either Papua New Guinea or the USA. Cross-reactivity to sera from a panel of subjects with a variety of other parasitic infections was limited to convalescent sera from individuals with echinococcosis. Seroepidemiological screening of three selected tropical populations verified the presence of human cysticercus infection on Bali (Indonesia) and its absence on Guam (in the Mariana Islands) and on Mota Lava (in the Banks Islands of Vanuatu). The purified cysticercus antigen was more sensitive and more specific than crude cysticercus or whole worm preparations for the serodiagnosis of human cysticercosis.
The effect of adenine arabinoside (ara-A) on Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) in cultures of lymphoid cells was examined with use of an EBV-producing cell line, P3HR-1, and a nonproducing cell line, Raji. The presence of EBV-associated viral capsid antigen (VCA) and early antigen (EA) was detected by indirect immunofluorescence. Ara-A inhibited the expression of VCA in P3HR-1 cells at concentrations fivefold below those that inhibited cell multiplication; there was no concomitant accumulation of EA. Ara-A did not inhibit superinfection of Raji cells with EBV and did not induce EA until high concentrations of the compound were reached. The inhibition of the expression of VCA but not EA is consistent with a postulated inhibition by ara-A of viral-directed synthesis of DNA. At low concentrations, ara-A may exert a more specific antiviral effect than that reported for idoxuridine and cytosine arabinoside in this system.
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