Welcome! This blog contains research & information on lifestyle, nutrition and health for those with MS, as well as continuing information on the understanding of the endothelium and heart-brain connection. This blog is informative only--all medical decisions should be discussed with your own physicians.

The posts are searchable---simply type in your topic of interest in the search box at the top left.

Almost all of MS research is initiated and funded by pharmaceutical companies. This maintains the EAE mouse model and the auto-immune paradigm of MS, and continues the 20 billion dollar a year MS treatment industry. But as we learn more about slowed blood flow, gray matter atrophy, and environmental links to MS progression and disability--all things the current drugs do not address--we're discovering more about how to help those with MS.

To learn how this journey began, read my first post from August, 2009. Be well! Joan

Sunday, January 23, 2022

Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) and MS

The association of the Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) and multiple sclerosis is one that has evolved over of decades of research.  95% of all humans carry the dormant or "latent" EBV virus.  But in people with MS, there is an activation of the virus, which is seen in tissue of autopsied brains. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2118531/ 

I wrote about this connection exactly 10 years ago.  https://ccsviinms.blogspot.com/2012/01/hypoxia-reactivates-latent-ebv-january.html

EBV is in the news a decade later, because researchers at Harvard have a new study published in Science  https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abj8222

Their conjecture is that if people are never infected with EBV, they will never develop MS.  Well, that would be wonderful!  Incredible.  An end to MS.  An EBV vaccine will be developed, and it may well help future generations.  But what about the people alive today on the planet, the 95% of us who are already infected with EBV?  

Back in 2011, researchers at Buffalo Neuroimmaging Analysis Center published a paper in Expert Reviews on how venous stasis (or impeded blood flow out of the brain) might be responsible for a reactivation of EBV.  This paper no longer exists online, which is heart-breaking to me.  The only place I found links to this hypothesis was in my writing.  

But I would like to suggest that this be further explored. 

The association between EBV infection and CCSVI has not yet been explored; however, it could be hypothesized that venous stasis in the superior saggital sinus due to extracranial outflow impairment could affect the drainage of bridging veins that pass through the subarachnoid space (near the meninges and EBV-infected B-cell follicles) and contribute to EBV activation. The venous stasis hypothesis in the SSS may contribute to understanding why so many different viruses and bacteria [3,111] have been linked to increased MS susceptibility risk over the last 50 years.

I have stopped following MS research and writing about it for many reasons.  Jeff continues to do quite well, and I am not the person to be giving out medical advice.  

Follow the ISNVD.  Listen to experts.  Take care of yourselves. 
Be well,
Joan 








Posted by at 6 comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)