Groundbreaking discovery: Infection with common viruses triggers the development of multiple sclerosis
Created: 2022-01-20 05:13
By: Juliane Gutmann
Dizziness and unsteady gait are symptoms of the nervous disease MS.
© Frank Rumpenhorst/dpa
A new US study has shown a link between Epstein-Barr virus infection and MS.
You can find out what that means here.
Visual disturbances, dizziness, tingling on the skin, unsteadiness when walking through to depression and paralysis: multiple sclerosis* is a nervous disease that usually begins in early adulthood.
Inflammatory foci develop in the brain, which affect the central nervous system.
This has various important tasks, such as controlling the interaction of posture and movement, controls the sleep-wake cycle, enables us to speak and allows us to store memories and experiences in our memory.
All of these functions can be so limited in MS patients that they can no longer cope with their everyday life on their own. According to the Federal Association of the German Multiple Sclerosis Society (dmsg), more than 252,000 MS sufferers live in Germany.
More than 15,000 people are newly diagnosed with the disease every year. According to the dmsg, women are affected twice as often as men.
The causes of MS are not fully understood.
As the portal informs
neurologists and psychiatrists online
, hereditary factors as well as external influences (such as viral infections, smoking and vitamin D intake) play a role.
US researchers have now investigated how infection with the Epstein-Barr virus, which can result in glandular fever, affects the development of MS.
Also read:
Herpes viruses trigger multiple sclerosis?
The study comes to an alarming conclusion
Viral infection as a trigger of multiple sclerosis
A key study result:
the risk of developing multiple sclerosis was increased 32-fold after infection with the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV).
The US researchers, who published their study on the Science portal, go even further.
According to them, the study results point to “EBV as the main cause of MS”.
The large-scale study involved approximately 10 million young adults on active duty in the US military. During the 20-year study period, the researchers documented
955 MS cases
in which they were able to use blood samples to determine whether and when they had an EBV infection. As
Der Spiegel
further reported, the data of the MS patients were compared with a comparison group consisting of military personnel without multiple sclerosis who were as similar as possible.
“The strength of the paper lies in the very large number of over ten million people observed and in the length of the study of around 20 years.
This makes it the most convincing study in the field to date and
clearly shows that MS would almost never develop without EBV infection, "
Spiegel
quotes
Henri-Jacques Delecluse from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), who was not involved in the study.
Treatment of MS: vaccination possible?
The study results could advance MS therapy enormously.
For example, a vaccination against the Epstein-Barr virus is being discussed, but it is not yet on the market.
According to Delecluse, eliminating the EBV-infected B cells appears more promising than vaccination
, informs
Der Spiegel
.
(jg) *Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.