Multiple Sclerosis Is Likely Caused by a Virus, Finds Study of 10 Million Military Personnel

very interesting

Thank you for sharing. That’s very interesting. Good for people with MS to have some clues. Maybe they can try treating EBV herbally. Also good to see a large study like this find an infectious cause for an “autoimmune” illness. Find a way to kill or disable EBV that doesn’t require killing your B cells.

Very interesting, though I’m still confused how they ruled out some other causative agent that make you susceptible to ebv the later caused ms. I’m just confused how they proved causation and not just correlation.

indeed the huge dataset makes the connection quite compelling

ref proving causality - i think the authors would say they have demonstrated the likelihood is 95% or above - rather than absolute proof - so its more of a case of proven by statistical probability. in science something if often regarded as as-good-as-proven if the probability or confidence interval statistically is up there in the high nineties

they did do some additional work to see if they could find antibodies to other things with a pretty broad sweep of 200 antibodies - and did not find anything else that was indicated at a high incidence

they theorises that its not simply a case of EBV causes MS - more EBV causes some immune changes which in turn - most likely through molecular mimicry - cause MS - and that a persons genetic and environmental factors will likely influence individual risk a great deal.

i think Mposts explanation of how Lyme could be involved is still valid and astute - as we now know that many chronic infections are polymicrobial - but we should also consider that lyme is known to cause cross reactive positive serology for EBV - so that can cause a confounding signal to anyone trying to interpret their own results.

overall - i see this as a really positive story - in that researches have demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that one of the mysterious "auto-immune diseases" is in fact caused by a pathogen - that is generally regarded as self resolving - and not only that but it can lay dormant unseen for years - so this should help break down barriers around similar concepts in lyme, bart etc

Tomas Grier and McDonald have found lyme bacteria and worm debris in upper Midwest MS brains though. Maybe thats in addition to viruses. Dont know if those two guys ever mentioned that though.

Yeah astroman, MacDonald's take is "Alzheimer's Borreliosis"...

and yeah Garzie it seems like more people will come around to this understanding across the "polymicrobial" thesis with more of these very compelling studies

AB MacDonald (Harvard pathologist) also explains that these microbes get along very well (symbiotically and strategically) in biofilms (see Costerton, "father of Biofilms"), there's liable to be a lot of different types of "gunk" and "crud" in those films, from active infections to the remaining calcifications, and past/present immune reactions.. all sorts of worm parts, tail ends and debris along with cyst, granule and more intact flagellum/nematodae...in biofilm(s).

I appreciate that feedback, Garzie. When I found the new website for The Institute for Molecular Medicine, I didn't think it was the same organization, because Nicolson wasn't mentioned anywhere. Plus, many of the papers previously published on the old site were also gone. However, I was able to confirm that the old website and the new one both listed the same physical address. So, it seems Nicolson and his work were vaporized. Very puzzling, indeed.

Phillips put out a tweet mentioning MS EBV and lyme.

AS FOLLOWS:

Interpreting this EBV data without evaluating interactions between EBV & Lyme is a big oversight.

Decades of research links spirochetal infection to MS.

Plus, Lyme induces replication of EBV as below.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12630667/