Multiple lines of evidence are converging on the idea that viruses you picked up decades ago might quietly be driving age-related diseases.

We've known for a few years that EBV raises MS risk 32-fold, and that molecular mimicry between an EBV protein and nerve insulation likely triggers brain autoimmunity. What remained unclear was why some people persistently carry EBV and others don't.

A new paper in @Nature from the @RyanDhindsa (whose lab has been supported by @impetusgrants) and @CalebLareau labs answers that at population scale. They mined ~735,000 human genomes for traces of Epstein-Barr virus, using reads of viral genomes that existing pipelines were throwing out as junk, and found that ~10% of people carry detectable EBV DNA in blood.

Carrying persistent EBV is associated with variable antigen processing, and the broader genetic architecture of viral persistence shares a component with lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and type 1 diabetes.

Meanwhile, a separate line of very recent evidence is also pointing in that direction. The shingles vaccine, targeting another persistent herpesvirus, is showing ~20% dementia risk reduction in quasi-randomized studies which has been replicated across multiple countries.

There seems to be more at the intersection of immunity and age-related disease than we initially thought. Read the Nature paper here: nature.com/articles/s4158…

The EBV papers mentioned:
- science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
- nature.com/articles/s4158…

The shingles + dementia papers mentioned:
- cell.com/cell/fulltext/…
- nature.com/articles/s4158…