4 ms·
Check out Figure 1 in this paper. The model effectively is that HSV infects a great many people in early life, and becomes latent in neurons until old age. Then
by subcosmos 8y ago
Check out Figure 1 in this paper. The model effectively is that HSV infects a great many people in early life, and becomes latent in neurons until old age. Then it suddenly wakes up again and travels to the brain. All it takes is an infected muscle or other tissue, allowing the virus to get into the nerve.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3546524/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3546524/
Some VERY notable statistics mentioned in the paper : "Such studies have revealed endemic infection rates of 31% in children aged 6–14, rising to 49% in adults aged 14–49, and to a high of 80–90% in the population over 65. In one study of 40 autopsied TGs, HSV-1 sequences were amplified from DNA or RNA extracted from 81% of TGs from demented subjects, and 74% of controls"
I blogged about these connections here, for I think that this retrograde transport phenomenon might explain Tau phosphorylation, which is a secondary hallmark of Alzheimer's and other dementias : https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/cholesterol-have-we-shot-the-messenger-a3f5dfeba09 https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/cholesterol-have-we-shot-the-me...
- dnautics 8y agoNothing about the BBB in that paper.
- imtringued 8y agoWhy swim (cross BBB) if you can take the bridge (infect neurons)?
- pygy_ 8y agoAs its name implies, the blood brain barrier protects the brain from whatever happens to flow in the blood stream. The herpes virus enters the brain by another channel : the peripheral, somatosensory nerve cells whose axon has a T shape. One prong of the top bar goes to the peripheral tissue, and the other prong goes up to the brainstem.
- dnautics 8y agothanks for the explanation! That wasn't clear to someone who has enough biochemistry and biology to be dangerous but with no experience in physiology.
- pygy_ 8y agoYou're welcome! Expanding further: the blood brain barrier is made of cytoplasmic expansions of astrocytes in the central nervous system. The T-shape sensory cells are part of the peripheral nervous system, their axon ends up in the encephalon.