Isn't it time to wake up to the reality that we are in the middle of an HHV-6 pandemic?

- May 19, 2018

The Secret Lives of Human Herpes Virus 6 (HHV-6)
https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/the-secret-lives-of-human-herpes-virus-6-hhv6-2329-6895-1000352.php?aid=90561

Benjamin M Blumberg^*

Departments of Neurology, Microbiology & Immunology, University of Rochester Medical School, Rochester, NY, US

*Corresponding Author:: Benjamin M Blumberg
Departments of Neurology, Microbiology & Immunology
University of Rochester Medical School, Rochester, NY, US

Excerpt:

Introduction

Would you believe me if I told you that roseola of infants (Exanthem subitum: ES), childhood viral meningoencephalitis (ME), autism spectrum disorders (ASD), multiple sclerosis (MS) and progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) are all the same disorder? Probably not, but it is true, more or less and nonetheless. All these disorders are due to the covert action of a single infectious agent, human herpesvirus-6 (HHV-6). Naturally, there are wheels within wheels, but for the most part, the differences between the disorders are due to differences in the age at which the individual encounters exogenous stimulatory agents that “rile up” HHV-6, to the characteristics of the exogenous agents themselves, and to the nature of their interaction with HHV-6. A few have sensed this sort of continuum [1], and many have struggled to prove that HHV-6 is causally involved in MS by studies on blood and CSF [2]. I and my co-workers and at least four other groups generated neuropathological data over 10 years ago that, in the ensemble, was almost sufficient to prove it [3-13]. I admit that this point of view is still considered controversial by many, but with regard to MS, renowned NIH Infectious Disease Expert Steve Jacobson has commented that “Ultimately, the only way to demonstrate the involvement, or lack thereof, of HHV-6 or other herpesviruses in this disease is through a controlled trial of an efficacious antiviral drug.” [14], which unfortunately has not happened yet. Equally unfortunately, citations of this body of work have virtually disappeared from the literature. This Commentary and Brief Review is an effort to set the record straight.

The results are presented as a timeline, roughly in the order in which we encounter these HHV-6-mediated diseases. In an effort to allow the story line to flow uninterrupted, and to make this review more of a commentary, I have minimized the referencing in the text, and provided annotated references at the end, grouped according to the subject material of the text.

Conclusion

Currently, HHV-6 is not accepted by the medical community as the etiological agent of autism or MS or PML, and it is worth considering why this is so. The medical community rightly holds to a very high standard of proof before starting clinical trials in humans, and there are three main determinants that can provide sufficient motivations. I believe that the HIV-1/AIDS model that inspired the design of the fourpart drug cocktail is a useful basis for comparison. First, the perceived character of the disease must be very pressing. At the beginning of the AIDS era, the disease was rapidly fatal, and the number of HIV-1 infected individuals was rapidly expanding with no end in sight; the numbers of HIV-1 infected individuals eventually reached into the millions. Second, the science must be incontrovertible. In the case of HIV-1/AIDS, the role of HIV-1 was at first questioned even after its discovery, but there was a perfect animal model: SIV (and later HIV- 2) in monkeys. Third, there must be enough political pressure brought to force clinical trials. In HIV-1/AIDS, the gay community suffered so conspicuously and so severely early on that they organized political pressure groups to reformulate and accelerate diagnosis and treatment protocols, and both shortened the time to treatment and reduced the number of controls required for conclusive testing.

In striking contrast, in regard to MS, the number of patients is high but not rising at about 500,000, and MS is not perceived as rapidly fatal. In fact, the disease has been around so long that a degree of acceptance has emerged. Autism, although it has recently risen in incidence to an alarming level, is not fatal; it is more of a problem in therapy. In contrast to SIV or HIV-2 in monkeys, HHV-6 does not infect nonhuman animals, and a recombinant mouse model yielded weird results, perhaps due to the staining problem. The continued lack of a specific drug for HHV-6 also helps maintain disbelief. Perhaps only PML, the incidence of which is rising along with treatments for MS that reduce immune surveillance of the brain, and which is much more rapidly fatal than MS, will serve as a catalyst for increased political pressure. If the reasoning presented above remains insufficient to convince clinicians to perform these trials, then the proof of the proposed multiple roles of HHV-6 may have to await transcriptome sequencing studies, a drawnout, back-to-front approach [62,63].

This paper is also written for the patient, to promote more intensive and effective treatment for HHV-6-related demyelinating diseases. In this regard, a reviewer of this manuscript noted the emergence of care manager groups in Italy. It is well known that Italian health care and European practices in general, pay much time and personal attention to patients’ perceived well-being. The four-part cocktail described here suggests that care managers could be very useful in testing and evaluating most of the individual components, and spare the primary physicians much time and effort. Among the four categories of drugs, only two are prescription items – the anti-herpes drugs (valganciclovir or possibly Zovirax) and the immune blockers Tysabri^® and Gilenya^® - and only the latter demand the physician’s close and direct oversight, because of the risk of PML. Care managers could very well be made responsible for choosing among the multiple anti-inflammatory and antioxidant drugs on the market, and should also be responsible for carefully observing and recording the effects of their chosen drugs on the patients in their care. Miconazole and clobetasol represent a mid-range of responsibility due to the fact that these drugs are very insoluble in water, and would require a manufacturing pharmacist to prepare them in patient-usable form. It is my hope that there is enough material here to inspire the medical community and the care managers to cooperate in inaugurating well-targeted clinical trials; if successful, these trials would then constitute proof of the HHV-6 link.

¹In the case of Autism, there has been actual misreporting of data by the CDC – several blogs reporting a CDC whistleblowers’ statement to the effect that the MMR actually is associated with the onset of ASD are accessible over the Internet (e.g. Obama Grants Immunity to CDC Whistleblower on Measles Vaccine Link to Autism. Medicine Watch; Admin. Feb 4, 2015. And recently, the whistleblower’s story was printed in the Townsend Letter 399: 26, 2016. One reason the Government has adopted such a CYA stance is the existence of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICAP), which seeks to reimburse families of children who sustain medical and financial injury due to vaccines, and thus protect our Nation’s vaccine manufacturers [25]. This works well in cases like the Sabin vaccine against polio, which has a finite reversion rate and infects something like six in a million children. However, faced with the Autism Epidemic where the incidence rate is 1 in 68, and there are on the order of 257,000 children at risk for acquiring autism each year, the Government is reluctant to allow blame to be put on widely used vaccines such as the MMR. It is my hope that this report will ease the fears of the Feds somewhat. In my view, ASDs are primarily caused by the virus HHV-6, but it is not a vaccine virus; rather it is a ubiquitous, commensal, sometimes endogenous virus that cannot be avoided, and so Government liability under VICAP should perhaps be reassessed.

²Another way to use the Internet is to consult Wikipedia, the Encyclopaedia Brittanica of our age. As of 09/06/2016, when I called up Wikipedia: Autism, there was a decent section on vaccines in general, but there was not a single mention of HHV-6 among 224 reference titles. When I googled up Wikipedia: HHV- 6, among its 89 references, there was only a single reference to one of the key neuropathological studies on MS cited above (Challoner et al. [9], while several papers mentioned lack of or disappointment in drug studies. Among the references provided in the present paper, there were a total of only 255 authors, including the unnamed whistleblower. Even if we triple this number, to include authors writing in languages other than english or those not cited simply because of redundancy, we wind up with less than 1000 investigators worldwide who have contributed to the findings here. With the passage of time, interest shifs and memory fades. If only there were an efficacious anti-HHV-6 drug!

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