THAT HOLLY AHERN PERSON TOLD ME ON THE PHONE THAT EBV WAS NOT ASSOCIATED WITH MS AND THAT THAT WAS NOT WHAT THE LITERATURE SAID derrrr-herrrrrr: ====================== Epstein-Barr Virus May Contribute Causally to Multiple Sclerosis What data associates EBV with MS, a disease that afflicts 1 to 2 million people today? To address this question, it is important to distinguish EBVs cancers from MS. These tumors represent proliferating, infected cells; MS is a neurodegenerative disease resulting from demyelination leading to neuronal conduction blocks and potentially neuronal cell death. While EBV is found in its associated tumor cells, there is no reason to think it is in the myelin-producing glial cells or in the neurons whose axons are wrapped with myelin. Rather, it appears that the hosts immune response to EBV underlies the possible association of infection with EBV and a hosts risk of developing MS. It has been appreciated for years that people who develop infectious mononucleosis, a benign, self-limiting B cell proliferation, have an increased risk of developing MS [27]. EBV causes infectious mononucleosis, which usually occurs when adolescents are infected with the virus for the first time. Most people in the world will be first infected at a younger age and will not develop infectious mononucleosis and its associated risk for MS. More recently, higher titers of antibodies to EBV-encoded nuclear proteins have been found to correlate with the risk of developing MS [28]. In addition, another prospective study looking for people who developed MS without first being infected with EBV could find no such patients. Rather, people who were initially uninfected in all cases became infected prior to developing MS [29]. No other virus has been found so far to share these immune-related correlations with MS as does EBV. One possible explanation for EBVs being causally associated with MS comes from a well-established genetic contribution to MS. People with certain human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles such as DRB1*1501 have significantly increased risk of developing MS [30]. Patients with MS have increased levels of CD4+ T cells that recognize one viral protein, Epstein-Barr nuclear antigen 1 (EBNA1), and can kill EBV-positive cells. A fraction of these CD4+ T cells also recognize myelin-derived peptides [31]. If any of the HLA alleles that are associated with increased risk of acquiring MS were found to mediate the cross recognition of EBNA1 and myelin, then this finding would lend support to EBV contributing directly to MS. CD4+ T cells primed to kill EBV-infected cells might recognize myelin-producing cells. Of course, such alleles may not exist. plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001939
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 20:34:28 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015