Multiple lines of evidence are converging on the idea that viruses you picked up decades ago might quietly be driving age-related diseases.
We've known for a few years that EBV raises MS risk 32-fold, and that molecular mimicry between an EBV protein and nerve insulation likely triggers brain autoimmunity. What remained unclear was why some people persistently carry EBV and others don't.
A new paper in from the (whose lab has been supported by ) and labs answers that at population scale. They mined ~735,000 human genomes for traces of Epstein-Barr virus, using reads of viral genomes that existing pipelines were throwing out as junk, and found that ~10% of people carry detectable EBV DNA in blood.
Carrying persistent EBV is associated with variable antigen processing, and the broader genetic architecture of viral persistence shares a component with lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and type 1 diabetes.
Meanwhile, a separate line of very recent evidence is also pointing in that direction. The shingles vaccine, targeting another persistent herpesvirus, is showing ~20% dementia risk reduction in quasi-randomized studies which has been replicated across multiple countries.
There seems to be more at the intersection of immunity and age-related disease than we initially thought.
