{"id":16350,"date":"2018-05-03T07:32:38","date_gmt":"2018-05-03T07:32:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/?p=16350"},"modified":"2018-05-03T07:32:38","modified_gmt":"2018-05-03T07:32:38","slug":"the-autoimmune-virus-groundbreaking-ebv-finding-could-help-explain-me-cfs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/the-autoimmune-virus-groundbreaking-ebv-finding-could-help-explain-me-cfs\/","title":{"rendered":"The Autoimmune Virus? Groundbreaking EBV finding could help explain ME\/CFS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Simmaron Research<\/strong> blog post, by Cort Johnson, 30 April 2018: The Autoimmune Virus? Groundbreaking EBV Finding Could Help Explain ME\/CFS<\/a><\/p>\n

Viral Mystery\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been a co-author in almost 500 papers. This one is more important than all of the rest put together. It is a capstone to a career in medical research,\u201d Harley<\/h3>\n

I sensed some awe in Ron Davis\u2019s voice as he pushed for more understanding of Epstein-Barr Virus\u2019s effects in ME\/CFS during a talk at the Brain Science conference.\u00a0 Davis is not to my knowledge finding much evidence of EBV reactivation in the severe ME\/CFS patient study \u2013 a surprise \u2013 but he is very interested in what happened during that initial EBV infection, which appears to have triggered chronic fatigue syndrome (ME\/CFS) in so many people.<\/h3>\n

He\u2019s not alone in his \u201cadmiration\u201d for the virus. Simmaron\u2019s Advisor, Dr. Daniel Peterson, whose clinical practice and research stemmed from an outbreak in the Lake Tahoe region of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, has tracked EBV in patients for decades, noting very high titers to EBV and other herpes viruses in subsets of patients.<\/h3>\n

It\u2019s not surprising that these two important figures have had their eyes on EBV. EBV, after all, is kind of in a league of its own.\u00a0 An invader of B and epithelial cells, the 50th anniversary of its discovery was recently celebrated with numerous reviews.\u00a0 Epstein-Barr was discovered in 1966 by Anthony Epstein and Yvonne Barr. It was the first human virus shown to cause cancer<\/a>. The sequencing of its large genome in 1995 helped launch the genomic era.<\/p>\n

One of the more massive and complicated viruses, it\u2019s one of the very few viruses that\u2019s able to avoid elimination: once EBV infects your B-cells, it\u2019s in your body to stay. It\u2019s able to effectively hide from the immune system and reactivate just enough so that when the infected B-cells die it can move on to other cells.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re well equipped to ward off EBV when we\u2019re young \u2013 it usually produces only minor symptoms \u2013 but as our immune systems alter as we age, that changes. \u00a0Encountering EBV as an adolescent or adult (infectious mononucleosis, glandular fever)\u00a0 \u2013 as increasingly happens in our germ phobic age \u2013 often means months of convalescence as our immune systems struggle to ward off this powerful virus.<\/p>\n

The problems don\u2019t stop there. We know that infectious mononucleosis (IM) is a common trigger of ME\/CFS but coming down with IM\/glandular fever<\/a> in adolescence has also been shown to increase one\u2019s risk of coming down with multiple sclerosis 2-4 fold and lupus by fifty percent.\u00a0 Because of EBV\u2019s ability to remain latent in the body, EBV reactivations are a huge problem for transplant patients<\/a> with compromised immune systems.<\/p>\n

The big question concerning EBV is how a virus which has essentially been latent for decades could contribute to serious diseases like MS and lupus. We now may have the answer. Last week, what will probably turn out to be a seminal paper in pathogen research directly showed for the first time how EBV appears to be able to trigger autoimmune diseases later in life and could conceivably play a role in ME\/CFS.<\/p>\n

The rather hum drum title of the paper \u201cTranscription factors operate across disease loci with EBNA2 implicated in autoimmunity\u201d in the Nature Genetics Journal hardly hinted at the possibilities the paper presents.<\/p>\n

Transcription factors operate across disease loci, with EBNA2 implicated in autoimmunity<\/a> John B. Harley,\u00a0Xiaoting Chen,\u00a0Mario Pujato,\u00a0Daniel Miller,\u00a0Avery Maddox,\u00a0Carmy Forney,\u00a0Albert F. Magnusen,\u00a0Arthur Lynch,\u00a0Kashish Chetal,\u00a0Masashi Yukawa,\u00a0Artem Barski,\u00a0Nathan Salomonis,\u00a0Kenneth M. Kaufman,\u00a0Leah C. Kottyan\u00a0&\u00a0Matthew T. Weirauch. Nature Genetics<\/em>\u00a0(2018) doi:10.1038\/s41588-018-0102-3<\/p>\n

EBV\u00a0 consists of several proteins of which EBNA-2 is one. EBNA-2 is EBV\u2019s main viral\u00a0transactivator; i.e. it\u2019s a transcription factor that turns on genes in an infected cell that help EBV to survive. Essentially EBNA-2 allows EBV to hijack a cell\u2019s genetics and put them to its own use.<\/p>\n

The study \u2013 produced by researchers at Cinncinnati\u2019s Children Hospital \u2013 demonstrated that once EBV infects B-cells, it turns on genes that have been identified as risk factors for a boatload of autoimmune diseases.<\/p>\n

It turns out that even though the virus is, so to speak, latent; i.e. it\u2019s not replicating \u2013 its transcription factor is still active\u00a0<\/a> \u2013 altering the expression of our genes. The genes that it affects just happen to be the same genes that increase the risk of developing lupus, multiple sclerosis (MS), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), celiac disease, and type 1 diabetes. \u00a0Apparently decades of genetic assault from EBV\u2019s transcription factor can set the stage or at least contribute to many autoimmune diseases.<\/p>\n

Chronic diseases are usually caused by a variety of genetic and environmental factors. Because not everyone with these transcription factors comes down with a chronic illness, other factors must play a role. The authors believe, though, that the gene expression changes induced by the virus in the B cells could account for a large number of people with lupus and MS who fall ill.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn lupus and MS, for example, the virus could account for a large percentage of those cases. We do not have a sense of the proportion in which the virus could be important in the other EBNA2-associated diseases,\u201d Harley<\/p>\n

Read more<\/strong><\/a> about the ME\/CFS and research into the EBV virus<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Simmaron Research blog post, by Cort Johnson, 30 April 2018: The Autoimmune Virus? Groundbreaking EBV Finding Could Help Explain ME\/CFS Viral Mystery\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ve been a co-author in almost 500 papers. This one is more important than all of the rest … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[448,618,4390,221,224,637,636],"class_list":["post-16350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-autoimmune","tag-cort-johnson","tag-dr-john-b-harley","tag-ebv","tag-epstein-barr-virus","tag-glandular-fever","tag-infectious-mononucleosis"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5qkYK-4fI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16350"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16439,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16350\/revisions\/16439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}