Complex role of gamma-herpesviruses in multiple sclerosis and infectious mononucleosis.

Various researchers over the past few years have demonstrated higher titers and higher incidence rates of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) antibodies in Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients compared to controls. These findings were tentatively attributed to immunoregulation abnormalities of MS or perhaps to some other relationship with the MS syndrome yet to be determined. Meanwhile, an intensive environmental investigation of the Key West cluster just before it ended and for two years afterwards produced the conclusion that the MS outbreak had been caused solely by an exogenous environmental agent vectored by wildbirds. This paper attempts to correlate these two major findings into one comprehensive theory that explains the complex relationship of gamma-herpesviruses in the epidemiology and pathogenesis of MS.