From: rokimoto557@gmail.com   
      
   https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-04-multiple-sclerosis-oscars-science.html   
      
   Phys.org has a link to this article.  Multiple sclerosis was thought to   
   be some type of autoimmune disease where the patients own immune defense   
   system starts attacking specific tissue.  In this case neurons are   
   attacked.  These researchers determined that B cells were involved when   
   others were looking elsewhere.  B cells play an important part in our   
   adaptive immune system.  B cells produce the near infinite array of   
   antibodies, and when one gets selected as being potent enough they   
   become memory cells and keep producing that same antibody, that is used   
   to mount a rapid immune response if the antigen for that antibody   
   infects the host again.  Previous infection with Epstein Barr virus is   
   associated with inducing the autoimmune response that attacks the neural   
   tissue.   
      
   A couple of decades ago another herpes virus (Marek's specifically HVT   
   (Turkey hervesvirus) vaccine) was found to be associated with the   
   autoimmune disease vitiligo (the immune system attacks melanocytes) when   
   I was still at the University of Arkansas.  They had a line of chickens   
   that were prone to acquiring vitiligo.  It was found that the line   
   needed to be vaccinated with HVT before they would start to have   
   symptoms.  Unvaccinated birds could go their whole lives without getting   
   the autoimmune disease.  Another herpes virus was found to be associated   
   with Alzheimer's around 5 years ago.   
      
   Herpes virus has some mechanism for evading our adaptive immune system.   
   Virus like Marek's are never cleared from the birds.  They are   
   suppressed, but the birds will shed infective virus for the rest of   
   their lives.  It integrates into the genome and can pop out and start a   
   replication cycle.  My take is that the virus messes with the system   
   that screens antibodies as being self or foreign, and somehow mixes it's   
   foreign antigens in with the antigens that have been determined to be   
   self antigens.  There likely are individuals that have certain genetic   
   variants that alter the sequence of the normally self antigens so that   
   they get associated with the foreign antigens of the herpes virus.  The   
   virus messes with the self recognition system designed to prevent   
   autoimmune disease, and causes some host self antigens to produce an   
   adaptive immune response.  The prediction would be that vitiligo or   
   multiple sclerosis patients would share genetic variants involved in the   
   self recognition process, and may also have a specific antigen sequence   
   in melanocytes for vitiligo or neural tissue for MS patients.  Some   
   protein in those cells gets misidentified as being a foreign antigen,   
   and an adaptive immune response is mounted against that self antigen.   
      
   As a side note I am going off by myself on a road trip for the next   
   couple of weeks, and likely will not be posting, since I never put   
   Eternal September on my personal laptop.   
      
   Ron Okimoto   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)