‘We’ve suspected a possible role for a virus in MS for quite some time, and
these results certainly point to this particular virus.’
— STEVEN JACOBSON
National Institute
of Neurological Disorders
and Stroke THE STUDY, the first to suggest a link between herpes and
MS, points to the potential role of anti-herpes drugs in treating the often
untreatable disorder, experts said.
“We expect that currently available anti-viral treatments — for
example, acyclovir — might one day be applied successfully to MS,” said Steven
Jacobson, chief of viral immunology at the scientists at the National
Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Md., and the
study’s principal investigator. “We’ve suspected a possible role for a virus
in MS for quite some time, and these results certainly point to this
particular virus.”
In the study, more than one-third of MS patients had detectable levels
of active human herpes virus-6 (HHV-6) in their blood, Jacobson reported.
As many as 350,000 Americans are affected by MS, which most often
strikes between the ages of 20 and 40 and is characterized by muscle weakness,
visual disturbances and, eventually, disability and paralysis.
MS is characterized by the inflammation and eventual destruction of
myelin tissue, the protective covering of the nerve cells in the brain and
spinal cord. HHV-6 appears to speed up the breakdown of the protective myelin
covering, Jacobson said, causing symptoms to worsen.
The next step, he said, is to figure out why infection with such a
common virus causes disease in so few people.
A different strain of the virus that causes genital herpes, HHV-6
causes the common childhood illness roseola. It is not sexually transmitted.
HHV-6 is present in 90 percent of the adult American population as a
result of infection during the first few years of life, Jacobson noted. In MS,
the virus, which has been dormant for years, is somehow reactivated, he said.
In the new study, the investigators detected HHV-6 DNA — a marker of
active virus infection — in the blood of 15 of 50 MS patients. All 47 healthy
volunteers MS tested negative for the presence of active HHV-6 viral
infection.
Additional testing for the presence of HHV-6 virus in larger numbers of
MS patients as well as those with other autoimmune disorders is under way.
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