Herpes :: Human Protein Helps Chickenpox and Shingles Virus Spread

A team of scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has identified a human protein that helps varicella-zoster virus, the cause of both chickenpox and shingles, spread from cell to cell within the body.

NIAID virologist Jeffrey I. Cohen, M.D., and NIAID research fellow Qingxue Li, M.D., Ph.D., discovered that a surface protein of varicella-zoster virus attaches to a cellular protein called insulin-degrading enzyme, using it as a receptor to enter and infect cells. In the October 20, 2006 issue of the journal Cell, they also describe how interfering with this interaction inhibits the spread of virus among cells in the test tube. The discovery of this receptor is important in understanding varicella-zoster virus, say Drs. Cohen and Li.

Their finding is also an important first step towards designing new therapies for shingles. ?If safe and effective ways of disrupting this interaction can be found, eventually new interventions may be developed for treating people with this painful and debilitating disease,? says NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D.

Shingles occurs only in people who have already had chickenpox. Once chickenpox has run its course, some virus remains dormant in nerve cells at the base of the brain and alongside the spinal cord. With advancing age or and diminished immunity, the virus can reactivate years later and travel down the nerve cells to the skin. There it multiplies, causing the blistering rash of shingles and damaging sensory nerve endings. The rash usually heals within a few weeks, but the nerve damage sometimes causes one of the worst complications of shingles ? a severe type of pain called postherpetic neuralgia, which can last for months or even years.


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