Tight-laced t1_j9cjtnn wrote on February 20, 2023 at 10:45 PM

Reply to comment by princessParking in Is COVID unique in the way it affects different individuals in such different ways? by stupidrobots

This study of US Army Personnel was the groundbreaking link. It took 10m samples over 20 years, so a huge sample size. 955 army Personnel developed MS over the course of the study, of those 955, 954 had had EBV infections prior to developing MS.

So if you develop MS, there's a 99.9% chance you've had EBV, versus a 95% chance in the general population. They tested for other viruses, none stood out like EBV.

chemical_sunset t1_j9d37ev wrote on February 21, 2023 at 1:07 AM

The thought is that most people do not have the genetic predisposition to develop MS, but amongst those of us who do, EBV infection seems like an important switch to activate the MS disease process.

_dinoLaser_ t1_j9cn9cf wrote on February 20, 2023 at 11:09 PM

It’s interesting that it correlates almost 1:1, but having EBV is so common that it almost means nothing. Unless the ten percent of people that never had it also never get Parkinson’s 100% of the time. Wild if that’s the case.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK559285/#article-21268_s1

David_Warden t1_j9fjb0z wrote on February 21, 2023 at 3:41 PM

As numbers get close to 100% we have a tendency to think of them as much the same and sometimes miss something important.

Let's look at the numbers based on who hasn't tested positive for EBV.

5% in the general population 0.1% in the population with MS

This is a ratio of 50:1 which doesn't seem likely to be meaningless to me.