HUMAN SMPILEX VIRUS TYPE 1 - Article Example

Moreover, insofar as the Cleveland case was concerned, its presentation in a respected medical journal did lend the required air of credibility. Another link between changes in the immune system, a cofactor (psychological stress), and the recurrence of disease (in this case, genital herpes) was established in 1985 at the University of California at San Francisco, where health psychologist Margaret Kemeny evaluated 40 persons with genital herpes over a six-month period. She analyzed several variables, including measures of stressful life events (daily hassles, anticipated stress), life goals, coping measures, social support, and changing health habits.

Blood samples were drawn from the subjects each month so that the investigators could look at possible stress-induced immunological changes. The laboratory diagnosis can help to determine culture of the virus, type of the virus, direct fluorescent antibody, chain reaction, skin biopsy, and other immunological methods which helps to determine anti-HSV antibody. Serological tests are also used for HVS-1 detection, but because of their high costs, they are not popular in medical practice. According to the preliminary findings, subjects with the highest levels of stress suffered the highest rates of herpes recurrence and had changes in their immune systems, notably in the number of helper T-cells in their blood.

Moreover, the recurrences were most likely to occur in the month following a major stressful event -- such as the death of a family member, losing a job, failing an exam, or moving -- or in the month following the anticipation of a stressful event. If true, this would be a far greater threat than transfusion-related AIDS. Transfusion can also pass along one of the five members of the human herpes group, the cytomegalovirus (CMV), a slowspreading agent that can cause a mononucleosislike illness, birth defects, and infections in patients whose immune systems have been suppressed (Flint et al 2009).

Human Simplex Virus - 1Even without symptoms, the very possibility that the virus may have entered one's system is enough to paralyze a person with fear. If there is, indeed, as the researchers have shown, a direct association between stress and immune function, the intensity of that stress might very well determine whether someone who has had a questionable contact will develop AIDS or one of the diseases associated with it. On the other hand, as noted earlier, the consensus is that infection with the virus alone is enough to cause AIDS -- that it is the virus that severely damages the immune system, whether the system was previously impaired or not.

There is, of course, strong evidence in support of this view. For instance, although there was clinical and laboratory proof of cellular immune dysfunction in each of the cases of AIDS that were turning up in homosexual men, investigators were learning that not all of the victims had a history of underlying immunosuppressive disease or therapy (Flint et al 2009). According to epidemiological studies, "worldwide 90% of people have one or