Multiple Sclerosis Risk Raised by Virus - Study
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Infection with the Epstein-Barr virus that causes mononucleosis may increase the risk of developing multiple sclerosis later in life, researchers said on Tuesday.
Infectious diseases contracted early in life such as mononucleosis are suspected of altering how the body's immune system operates, a condition that could lead to auto-immune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, which affects some 330,000 people in the United States.
Multiple sclerosis is an incurable, usually chronic disease in which the tissues around the nerves come under attack from the body's own immune system and become inflamed, blocking nerve impulses and crippling the nervous system.
Epstein-Barr virus causes infectious mononucleosis, sometimes called ``the kissing disease,'' an often youthful infection spread through saliva that causes fever, fatigue, sore throat and swollen lymph glands.
Dr. Alberto Ascherio of Harvard School of Public Health in Boston examined previously drawn blood samples taken for the school's two large nurses' health studies to look for previous signs of the antibodies to the Epstein-Barr virus and a herpes-type virus.
ELEVATED LEVELS IN 18 SAMPLES
There were 144 women in the study with either confirmed or suspected cases of multiple sclerosis and they were compared with 288 healthy women.
Elevated levels of antibodies for the Epstein-Barr virus were found in samples from 18 of the women with multiple sclerosis, the study found. None had antibodies to the herpes-type virus.
"In conclusion, our results, in conjunction with those of case-control studies, offer evidence that (Epstein-Barr virus) infection may increase the risk of multiple sclerosis,'' Ascherio wrote in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association (news - web sites).
The few cases of both Epstein-Barr infection and multiple sclerosis in the study suggested other factors at work such as genetic predisposition, age at infection, and other microbes, the report said.
In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Donald Gilden of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver said several studies have shown a link between viruses and multiple sclerosis.
"Many viruses and pathogens have been associated with multiple sclerosis, although none has been tightly linked to disease,'' Gilden wrote.
For example, some multiple sclerosis patients have been found to have a form of chronic encephalitis caused by the measles virus, he said.
"Although the cause of multiple sclerosis is not likely to be found under the (Epstein-Barr virus) lamppost, the search for a viral cause of multiple sclerosis must continue,'' Gilden wrote
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