The super-short version is that researchers dug through the medical records of 10 million United States armed services personnel going back ~20 years, and discovered evidence suggesting that people who have been infected with EBV are 32 times more likely to develop MS thereafter, "comparable to the increase in risk of getting lung cancer from heavy smoking."

Technically speaking, what the authors of the study are asserting is not that EBV causes MS, although it's a tempting shorthand. It looks to me like what they believe is that the immune malfunction's origin is genetic, but EBV infection triggers MS in people who are genetically predisposed to it.

Meanwhile, it so happens that Moderna, one of the companies making a COVID-19 vaccine, has been trying the same developmental approach on a vaccine for EBV, which is just now entering early trials. That does those of us who already have MS fuck-all good in itself, of course, but if this line of inquiry is borne out by follow-up research, a better understanding of the condition's underlying mechanisms may emerge, which opens the possibility that someone might someday figure out how to turn it off. Reversing the damage already done is still probably too much to hope for, but heading off further degeneration would be something, all the same.

I'll be honest, I'm not as excited by this result for my own sake as I would have been 10 years ago, because I can plot the typical pace of medical science's advance vs. my own actuarial possibilities, and I don't like where I see those two curves most likely crossing. But who knows? I didn't think monoclonal antibodies would amount to anything within my lifetime either, and the damn things are everywhere now.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.