More than half of us are carriers of chronic herpesvirus infections. But even though the herpesvirus can infect our nerve cells, it rarely causes serious infection of the brain. Researchers from Aarhus University have now discovered a key element of the explanation.
The researchers have discovered a previously unknown defense mechanism in the body that is the reason why causes a serious and potentially fatal brain inflammation in only one out of 250,000 cases. The study has recently been in the journal . "The study has exciting perspectives because it gives us a better understanding of how the brain defends itself against ," says Professor Søren Riis Paludan from the Department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University.
He is the article's last author, a Lundbeck Foundation Professor and centre director of the Excellence Centre CiViA. "We've discovered how our body prevents herpesvirus from entering into the brain, even though 50–80% of us are chronically infected with this particular virus. The idea behind CiViA is that we want to understand how the body fights infections without harming itself at the same time.
The mechanism we've found doesn't cause inflammatory reactions," he says. The answer lies in the protective TMEFF1 gene. The brain uses a novel mechanism to keep the virus out Many years of experimenting with the genome-wide CRISPR screening technology and development of mice that lacked the critical gene have finally convinced the researchers that TMEFF1 produces a pro.