Word: virus
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Promiscuous. The variant virus, herpes simplex type II, usually attacks below the waist. It causes painful sores and swelling on the thighs, buttocks and genital areas. Unlike the basic herpes simplex, which strikes indiscriminately, type II appears to exercise moral judgment−tending to afflict primarily the sexually promiscuous. It is prevalent among teen-agers and young adults and among prostitutes, but is rare in children and in celibate women. In fact, according to Bernard Roizman, professor of microbiology at the University of Chicago, genital herpes is the second most common venereal disease in the U.S., trailing only gonorrhea. Roizman...
Unfortunately for the promiscuous, there is often no clinical evidence that a sexual partner is carrying the virus. Ysolina Centifanto, an associate professor of microbiology at the University of Florida College of Medicine, studied 263 men from a wide range of social and economic groups. Thirty-nine, none of whom had a history of active genital herpes, were found to carry the virus in their genitourinary tracts...
...light from a fluorescent tube cuts the healing time* by 50%. Drs. G. Robert Nugent and Samuel Chou of the West Virginia University Medical Center recently reported that applications of ordinary ether or chloroform will clear up herpes sores in as little as two days, apparently by altering the virus so as to make it more vulnerable to the body's natural defenses. Other doctors are finding the antiviral drug isoprinosine effective. An oral drug that seems to bolster the body's immune response to the virus (TIME, March 19), isoprinosine has been used against both herpes simplex...
Ominous. That goal has now assumed greater importance. Mothers with genital herpes can pass the virus on to their offspring, who may develop skin lesions and internal infections. The virus may also be responsible for more serious illness in the carriers themselves. Type II virus particles have been found to transform normal animal cells into cancerous ones in test tubes, and the discovery has raised speculation that the type II herpes may be linked to genital cancers in humans. "It's like finding a guy with a gun in a building where a murder has been committed," says Alvin...
Genetic substances of herpes viruses have also been isolated from the cells of women with cervical cancer. There is other ominous evidence linking the virus with malignancy. Dr. Andre Nahmias and his colleagues at Atlanta's Emory University have been conducting a long-range study of 900 women known to have had genital herpes, comparing them with 600 women who have not had the infection. The incidence of cervical cancer is eight times higher in the first group than the second...