Human Herpesvirus-6B with Mesial Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

[brain]

Very Interesting Reading ...

Association of Human Herpesvirus-6B with Mesial Temporal Lobe Epilepsy


There's so much information in this PLoS (Public Library of
Science) Medicine (Open Access); that contains a
lot of wealth of information, links, and more. I just
had to share this.

[Bernard]

The researchers in this study asked whether infections with human herpesvirus 6B (HHV-6B) are associated with a common type of epilepsy called mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE). Patients with MTLE often have extensive scarring in the hippocampus, a brain region responsible for memory that lies deep within a bigger region called the temporal lobe. Hippocampal scarring and MTLE are associated with a history of fever-induced fits, and HHV-6B infection can cause such fits in young children. Most people become infected with HHV-6B (or the closely related HHV-6A) early in life. The virus then remains latent for years within the brain and elsewhere. Given these facts and a previous investigation that showed that brain tissue from several patients with MTLE contained HHV-6B, the researchers reasoned that it was worth investigating HHV-6B as a cause of MTLE.

...

These findings, together with those from the previous study, reveal that nearly two-thirds of patients with MTLE (but no patients with other forms of epilepsy) have an active HHV-6B infection in the brain region where their epilepsy originates. Overall, they provide strong support for the idea that HHV-6B infections might cause MTLE, particularly given the results obtained from the patient whose condition only improved after multiple brain operations had removed all the virally infected material. Furthermore, the demonstration that HHV-6B infection reduces glutamate transporter expression in astrocytes suggests that HHV-6B infection might cause astrocyte dysfunction. This dysfunction could lead to injury of the sensitive neurons in the hippocampus and trigger MTLE. Additional patients now need to be studied both to confirm the association between HHV-6B infection and MTLE and to discover exactly how this virus triggers epilepsy.

Interesting. Thanks for the link!