Is Chlamydia pneumoniae present in brain lesions of patients with multiplesclerosis?

We investigated the presence of Chlamydia pneumoniae in 81 normal and patho logical specimens obtained from postmortem brain tissues of patients with m ultiple sclerosis and with other neurological or nonneurological diseases. The assays used included PCR amplification of all DNA samples in the initia l study. Culture and a second PCR amplification of the organism in a subset of 19 brain specimens were also performed in two separate laboratories. At l results were negative. Thus, this study on a large number of brain tissue s suggests that C. pneumoniae is not involved in inflammatory demyelination .