Word: viruses
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Cold sores are icky. And they're insidious. The raw, ugly blisters show up without notice and are unpreventable. Worse yet, once you're infected with the virus that causes them, you're stuck with it for good. But landmark research reported today by microbiologists at Duke University may offer the potential for a cure...
...nearly 90% of adults have been exposed to the herpes simplex virus-1 (HSV-1), which causes cold sores. People are usually infected as children, but many never have symptoms. For those who do, however, cold sores are a painful and permanent nuisance, always erupting in the same location, at the original site of infection on the lips or mouth. Once HSV-1 enters the body it hunkers down for life, most of the time hiding dormant in the cranial nerves near the spine. The virus can be triggered by outside stress, such as exposure to sunlight, a fever...
Until now, research has generally concentrated on keeping HSV1 inactive - and preventing cold sores from ever showing up. But the Duke researchers took the opposite tack: figuring out precisely how to switch the virus from latency to its active stage. That's important, says lead author Dr. Bryan Cullen, professor of molecular genetics and microbiology at Duke, "because unless you activate the virus, you can't kill...
...inserting the LAT RNA into mice, Cullen found that it breaks down into even smaller strands called microRNA. Researchers then discovered that it was the microRNA that blocked production of the protein that activates HSV-1. "So if there was a sufficient supply of microRNA, then the virus stayed latent," Cullen says. "But under a high level of stress, the microRNA's blocking mechanisms break down, thus triggering a cold sore." The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, will be published in the journal Nature this week...
Understanding how to override the microRNA could allow scientists to activate the virus and then kill it using acyclovir. "Once the virus sticks its head up over the fence, you whack it off for good," Cullen says. "Yes, the person has to have one last cold sore, but it'd be worth it to most people to cure them forever...