United States: A severe blow to the head can also cause a sneaky strike to the human immune system – a one-two punch that might reactivate viruses in the human body, possibly attributing to neurodegenerative disease.
More about the news
Scientists have used stem cell ‘mini-brains’ in a study that exposed how a herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) that has been ‘arrested’ by the immune system can come out of its cage when the brain tissue is damaged.
According to biomedical engineer Dana Cairns from Tufts University in the US, “We thought, what would happen if we subjected the brain tissue model to a physical disruption, something akin to a concussion?” sciencealert.com reported.
“Would HSV-1 wake up and start the process of neurodegeneration?” he added.
Head injuries can trigger dormant viruses that cause dementiahttps://t.co/dVb49RoU1p
— braininjurynh (@BrainInjuryNH) January 14, 2025
These mini-brains are not real, since they are not a perfect representation of a real brain. However, they do a pretty good job of showing how a piece of brain tissue might act during repeated, minor ‘closed head’ injuries.
One week later, two months after the injury, the authors reported the development of clumps and tangles of proteins, typical of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
The selected brain cells also exhibited signs of neuroinflammation, while there was inflammation of the pro-inflammatory immune cells.
What more have the experts noted?
New potential neurodegenerative disease risk factors include traumatic brain injuries, particularly chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), where chronic inflammation resulting from even mild head injury appears to be a contributing factor.
How that process unveils itself is not clear, but the other recent comparable studies pointed out that viruses may have a unique role here.
HSV-1 is a considerable cause of neurodegeneration and might even increase the risk of dementia by twofold.
Did you know serious head trauma could reawaken dormant viruses in your body? 🤯 A new study explores how injury might activate latent infections like herpes. Fascinating insights into the brain virus connection:https://t.co/pJAvNbWysT
— HerpesSupportHub (@HerpesSupport_H) January 14, 2025
Later, in 2008, the researchers established that the genes of HSV-1 were detected in as many as 90 percent of the protein plaques in the post-mortem of Alzheimer patients, as sciencealert.com reported.
Most of this viral DNA was recovered in the plaques. To explore the question of whether an HSV-1 infection can be reactivated by brain injury, researchers at Tufts University and Oxford University decided to look at brain slices.
To physical injury, the latent HSV-1 individuals released half amounts of the neocortical excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate.