Nine in 10 people worldwide have been infected with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). But only a small number will go on to develop serious illnesses that have been linked to the virus, such as lupus, chronic lung disease and lymphoma.
Scientists from AstraZeneca’s Centre for Genomics Research collaborated with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Baylor College of Medicine on a new study that may explain why.
The study, published Jan. 28 in Nature, uncovered 22 genes associated with impaired control of EBV that could increase the risk of developing a range of chronic diseases years after being infected with the common virus.
The findings, based on an analysis of genetic and health data from 750,000 people in the U.S. and U.K., could help inform R&D efforts aimed at early intervention and treatment for a range of diseases, Slavé Petrovski, Ph.D., vice president of AstraZeneca’s Centre for Genomics Research, and a co-author of the study, said in a press release.
EBV causes infectious mononucleosis in some people but is typically asymptomatic.
Once a person is infected, the virus lies dormant in the body for life. However, the study found that certain genetic variants make it harder for the body to control the virus, leading to higher EBV levels in the blood.
To conduct the study, researchers took traces of viral DNA that are typically discarded in routine human genetic studies and used a novel computational approach to quantify how much was circulating in the blood.
The researchers concluded that people with elevated EBV levels were more likely to later develop certain chronic diseases. For example, they found those with higher EBV levels are about 50% more likely to have rheumatoid arthritis and nearly twice as likely to have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
The study comes amid a growing body of research linking EBV to diseases like multiple sclerosis, long COVID and certain cancers and as drugmakers including Moderna and Merck have begun human testing of new vaccines against the virus. There are currently no FDA approved EBV vaccines on the market.
“This research adds a missing piece to the puzzle of chronic disease,” study co-author Ryan Dhindsa, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of pathology and immunology at Baylor College of Medicine, said in the release. “We show that genetic variation influences how well EBV is controlled, and that poorer viral control is associated with several long-term illnesses.”
“While further work is needed to determine which of these links is causal, the results point to new ways to identify risk and guide future efforts to prevent and treat chronic disease,” he said.
