4 ms·

It should say that the immune system is the cause.

Barrin92 5y ago
it should not for the same reason we don't blame the bullet when someone gets shot, or the train for driving over the suicidal person. That's the difference between a proximate and a root cause.
- supperburg 5y ago
  No. They are trying to use a vaccine to solve the problem and this is wrong because the virus is not the root cause of harm. Even if they did manage somehow to prevent the virus from getting in, which the vaccine will fail at, it wouldn’t matter because this same kind of immune dysfunction is at the center of a million other diseases. A treatment that controls the immune system wipes them all out in one stroke. But people are stuck on yesterdays thinking
  - kretor 5y ago
    From the article: "In this cohort, the risk of MS increased 32-fold after infection with EBV but was unchanged after infection with other viruses."
  - Zerverus 5y ago
    That’s a lot of wild claims without any substantiation. The bar at HN surely is higher than this.
    - MauroIksem 5y ago
      It's not.
    - supperburg 5y ago
      It’s not so wild. Inflammation is very ancient and it does a lot more than make a paper cut turn red. It pulls lots of fundamental levers, metabolic levers. Inflammatory signals are one of the great frontiers of medicine. We have barely scraped the surface of it.
      - Zerverus 5y ago
        That’s the opposite of substantiating. Hand waving ‘it’s the early days’ commentary Now where have we seen this before…
dm319 5y ago
You are right despite what other HNers think. MS is first and foremost an auto-immune disease. It is not that surprising that infections that provoke a large immune response can trigger an autoimmune condition. When we understand the immune system better, especially around the early stages of response to a potential pathogen, we'll understand how auto-immune disease starts and is maintained. EBV has long been a putative risk factor for MS, but given 95% of the population will have EBV, it clearly only goes some way to explaining how MS comes about.

it should not for the same reason we don't blame the bullet when someone gets shot, or the train for driving over the suicidal person. That's the difference between a proximate and a root cause.

supperburg 5y ago
No. They are trying to use a vaccine to solve the problem and this is wrong because the virus is not the root cause of harm. Even if they did manage somehow to prevent the virus from getting in, which the vaccine will fail at, it wouldn’t matter because this same kind of immune dysfunction is at the center of a million other diseases. A treatment that controls the immune system wipes them all out in one stroke. But people are stuck on yesterdays thinking
- kretor 5y ago
  From the article: "In this cohort, the risk of MS increased 32-fold after infection with EBV but was unchanged after infection with other viruses."
- Zerverus 5y ago
  That’s a lot of wild claims without any substantiation. The bar at HN surely is higher than this.
  - MauroIksem 5y ago
    It's not.
  - supperburg 5y ago
    It’s not so wild. Inflammation is very ancient and it does a lot more than make a paper cut turn red. It pulls lots of fundamental levers, metabolic levers. Inflammatory signals are one of the great frontiers of medicine. We have barely scraped the surface of it.
    - Zerverus 5y ago
      That’s the opposite of substantiating. Hand waving ‘it’s the early days’ commentary Now where have we seen this before…

dm319 5y ago

You are right despite what other HNers think. MS is first and foremost an auto-immune disease. It is not that surprising that infections that provoke a large immune response can trigger an autoimmune condition. When we understand the immune system better, especially around the early stages of response to a potential pathogen, we'll understand how auto-immune disease starts and is maintained. EBV has long been a putative risk factor for MS, but given 95% of the population will have EBV, it clearly only goes some way to explaining how MS comes about.