Molecular Detection of EBV, HBV, CMV and HHV6 in Multiple Sclerosis Patients

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic disease with a significant morbidity. A wide spectrum of risk factors has been suggested that triggers the development of MS. Among them, several viral infections have been implicated to play a role in MS pathogenesis. We aimed to evaluate the relationship between viral diseases including EBV, HHV6, CMV, and HBV with MS in the present case control study. About one hundred confirmed MS patients and age and sex matched people were selected as case and control groups, respectively. The patients were randomly selected from individuals diagnosed by neurologists based on clinical signs and symptoms and imaging procedures. More than hundred MS patients and patients who were accepted for other causes were analyzed for the presence of DNA of EBV, HHV6, CMV, and HBV separately. DNA of EBV (9.37% of control group) were positive in real-time PCR while the frequency of positive test result was zero in case group (p-value=0.0012). HBV DNA was not detected in both case and control groups. The prevalence of CMV was 0.88 and zero in control and case groups, respectively (p-value=0.3410). For HHV6, 9.73 % of control group had a positive result in real-time PCR, while this test was positive in 5.88% of individuals with MS (p-value=0.2959). We detected significantly higher number of individuals with DNA of EBV in their blood among control group than the case group. In conclusion, the results suggest a surprisingly adverse association between MS and EBV and no association between the presence of DNA of HBV, CMV, and HHV6 and MS.