Lofty goals indeed, but would it happen in my lifetime with the disease? With recent research papers doubling down on evidence linking MS and the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), as we reported to you back in January, many are asking if a vaccine that stops EBV might be used to prevent MS from ever occurring. The answer is complicated.
So Far, an EBV Vaccine Doesn’t Exist
First, of course, a vaccine for EBV does not yet exist. With messenger RNA, or mRNA, technology being used so quickly and successfully to create vaccines for COVID-19, we may have been lulled into thinking that creating vaccines has become mundane and easy. It’s not, so there is first the development and testing required to get said jabs ready for arms. Investigators are working on that part of the equation. Once this theoretical vaccine for EBV is approved, however, then we get into choppier waters.
Vaccine Hesitancy Would Likely Limit Uptake
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed a rise in vaccine hesitancy in the United States and around the world. Adding another dose (or multiple doses, depending on how the vaccine might work) to the list of shots that children get will prove difficult in these times. (By the time we reach our teens, about 80 percent of the population has already been exposed to EBV). The number of children who would need to be inoculated against EBV for scientists to follow up over their lives to see if the jabs do, in fact, prevent eventual multiple sclerosis would reach the tens of millions, according to MS researcher Gavin Giovannoni. While you might think that people would line up to get their kids protected from MS (as well as other conditions that EBV may spark), the hesitancy to vaccinate U.S. kids against human papillomavirus, which is known to cause several cancers, is proof that it will be a difficult slog to say the least.
Perhaps Treating EBV Is a Possibility
That being said, there might be cause for hope for those of us already living with MS in either this yet-to-be-developed vaccine or antiviral treatments. Some researchers hypothesize that it is not the initial infection with EBV that causes MS but rather that EBV becomes something of a cog that drives MS by persistent infection. For those researchers, the idea is that treating EBV would change or stop a course of MS.
Is This the Beginning of a Cure for MS?
When I first heard of a cure for MS being in three acts, I surely never thought that a vaccine against a virus might be the first act to play out. If EBV exposure and infection are proven to trigger the cascade of events in our bodies resulting in multiple sclerosis, it appears that we could be on that track. How long it takes is another story. The National Health Service in Great Britain states that, while the gap in life expectancy between people with MS and those without is getting smaller, “the average life expectancy for people with MS is around 5 to 10 years lower than average.” So whether this breakthrough happens in my lifetime with MS depends on how fast that life expectancy gap shrinks. Wishing you and your family the best of health. Cheers, Trevis
