Comment by kaycebasques | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kaycebasques | Hacker News Reader

A few loosely related thoughts:

Background: HSV1 is commonly known as cold sores. Some people get them in their mouth, or on their lips. Most of the population don't develop any symptoms.

This link between HSV1 and Alzheimer's could be big business. The numbers are wildly divergent, but it sounds like a sizable chunk of the US population has HSV1. I've seen estimates from 20% to 80%. Even if it's the very conservative 20% number, that's still a big market.

The skeptic in me (his name is David) is suspicious of this article precisely because it has the potential to be such a big market. Case in point, there's a link to some HSV1 medicine at the bottom of the article. I wonder if they have an affiliate marketing arrangement with the makers of acyclovir. Tangentially related, I think that this article is on the front page of HN precisely because HSV1 is so widespread. For example, if another article discussed a cure for Alzheimer's, but that article involved some rare condition that does not affect the general population, would that article hit page #1?

With that said, I think our society's lax approach to HSV1 is bizarre. In Sex Ed, I didn't get any education around the fact that kissing people and sharing drinks can spread a virus. After reading quite a few articles on the virus, I got the impression that STD researchers don't really know much about it. I could be wildly incorrect about that last point, I'm not a medical expert. It's just the general impression I got when trying to understand HSV1 from an STD perspective. For example, it's been common wisdom for a long time that, if you have HSV1 (cold sores), then you can't get HSV2 (genital herpes). But the reality seems to be more ambiguous than that. Apparently there was a fairly recent study mentioning that college students who have HSV1 performed oral sex on their partners and transferred HSV1 to the partner's genitals. Or something like that.

Long story short, although I'm skeptical of the business incentives around associating HSV1 with something as scary as Alzheimer's, I welcome more research around understanding HSV1.

>> Long story short, although I'm skeptical of the business incentives around associating HSV1 with something as scary as Alzheimer's, I welcome more research around understanding HSV1.

If this is proven, I imagine almost all the funding for Alzheimers getting diverted to curing HSV1. That would suck for one group of researchers while being a boon to another - as well as half the world population with HSV1. Shingles (adult chickenpox) is also in the herpes family.

I wonder why that hasn't been possible so far. HSV has a huge impact on people's lifestyles in the US. You'd think just about everything would have been attempted by now to address it.

Both types of HSVs supposedly have been with humanity for thousands of years and are mostly asymptomatic or "occasionally unpleasant" as a condition, hence the liberal attitude. When doing an STD screening, in the US at least, your doctor will almost never bother with checking for HSV because 1. it's super prevalent 2. it's not harmful with the exception of people with deeply compromised immune systems

If you read about the history of the virus, supposedly in the past most people figured they'd get it (both variations) sooner or later and didn't particularly care. The stigma, especially of HSV2, allegedly started mid 20th century when acyclovir / zovirax came on the market and the company who created it needed a reason to push people to start using the medication. Nobody wanted to at the time, as HSV wasn't a big deal. However once you call people who have it "dirty" and make it shameful, the sales go up. Now you want to suppress outbreaks and potential spreading at all costs. Similar to AIDS in the 80s, in the US people won't even hug you if news leaks that you have HSV2.

Also amusing that, in the state of CA, receiving HSV (1 or 2) to the genitals from someone of wealth is a great source of compensation. Most of the money you'll receive from the civil case will not be for the medical treatment, it will be because of the "psychological damages and impact to lifestyle" from suddenly becoming a social pariah. Like you said, why this would be suable is not obvious. If 80% of the population has HSV1 and you transmit it to the genitals through oral sex, you're now a 2 year-long (statute of limitations) juicy target for a lawsuit. People of means have lost millions of dollars to this. Everybody having sex becomes a ticking timebomb of legal extortion. Better have your partners sign a consent form.

Or tell people you have HSV1 before sleeping with them.

Perhaps. Or perhaps something you can get a lip balm for at the Walgreens checkout shouldn't cost you millions of dollars.

Also, if you do disclose, you better have in it writing. If there's no evidence of STD disclosure, you can still be sued, and then it's he said vs she said (or pick your permutation of genders) and it's your two reputations competing for who's more trustworthy in court and can have the upper hand. That disclosure can still cost you.

Lawyers will always advise you to have disclosure confirmation in writing (email or paper is best, text might be still ok).

Lip balms do nothing to stop the spread of herpes, nor do they treat the infection. At best they soothe the symptoms. The only OTC medication currently available for cold sores, docosanol, seems to reduce the time it takes an outbreak to heal, but there are questions about both its effectiveness and the biological mechanism by which it works. The anti-viral acyclovir is also used to treat cold sores as well as other forms of HSV, chickenpox, and shingles, but it isn't available OTC.

Is the set of claimants gender-biased? Asking for a friend.

Not really. You just have to have money a lawsuit can extract from you. See http://herpesnews.com/herpes-legal/23-years-of-herpes-lawsui...

I'm the poster. I posted it because I wanted to get some of my dot-connecting noticed more (https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/cholesterol-have-we-shot-the-me...), but links to "viral" news content is more click-worthy than the "Show HN" section. As a scientist I've slowly learned hard lessons about how to hook people, and I'm terrible at it.

I don't profit from spreading these ideas. I'm just one of the head data scientists at one of the top dementia labs and I'm tired of longevity-based research taking so friggin long. I also have zero desire to spend a year writing this up only to pay some scientific journal top-dollar so they can paywall it. Putting it up on Medium hopefully saves more lives faster.

I guess I took inspiration from the viruses and snuck my medium post on an innocuous buzz article that is exploding on social media now. Sorry not sorry :p

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to insinuate that you had any shady objectives. From my casual research, I do think that it's important that we develop more understanding around HSV1, especially if there's a link to something as devastating as Alzheimer's.

My only goal was to inject some skepticism and awareness around why this particular article might receive more attention.

I wasn't offended! It's all good. I certainly hope the posted article didn't have any hidden objectives.

The linked papers however seem to point to the true hero of this story, a scientist who has apparently been taking shit for decades for her theories. Looks like she was right after all : https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/herpes-v...

Ruth Itzhaki from the University of Manchester notes that “hostility or derision occurred with most of my papers on this topic, and many people simply ignored them.”

I predict she will be a Nobel recipient

It's probably because it's fairly easy to get when your a small child. It's like trying to prevent 6 year olds or 2 year olds from getting a cold from other kids, pretty much neigh impossible.

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