An article that anyone discouraged about HSV 1 or 2 might want to read. Work is being done toward a cure!

[kdogstew]

To be honest, I am still discouraged about my current situation as I had my first major outbreak on Jan 20.   I certainly do not understand all (or even most) of the disease but I have been doing research.  There have been some significant events recently toward a cure and reading the article below may give some of you, discouraged like me,  a little hope.  With that said, we all know that curing most diseases or developing vaccines usually does not happen like what we saw with Covid,........ but Keith Jerome is the dude that just might figure this thing out.

One thing that seems to be most important about his work is that he now has funding from the National Institute of Health.  As we all know it takes money to cure diseases.   Previous to his work, the government did not see HSV 1 and 2 worth spending money on (that is my opinion).   When considering how to cut up the virus HSV 1 or HSV 2, the use of meganucleases sort of like "scissors" to cut up the virus seem superior to the newer method of viral scissors called CRISPR.  Again, I am no authority but I teach an upper level high school biology class so I have a little understanding.   From what I can gather, the CRISPR method is sort of like an HD television.  We all agree that HD flat screen TVs are far superior to the old tube tvs... right?   Well what if for some reason the old tube tv had a better application in some part of society.   In fact, what if this small part of society could benefit more from a tube tv than the fancy high definition flat screen TV?   That is sort of the difference (from what I gather between CRISPR and meganucleases.)    The scissors  called CRISPR are more practical for most genetic disorders being studied so that technology is getting all the work and money, but for some reason the older model (meganuclease) is better for destroying HSV 1 and 2.   Now that Keith Jerome has more funding via a grant from NIH it seems reasonable he can sort of speed up the research (using meganucleases) and hopefully make some major gains in the effort.  Oh, also you can see in the questions and answers that the emphasis of his current research is actually on HSV 2 and not HSV 1 or Herpes zoster (the one that causes shingles)  

Again, I only have a rudimentary understanding of immunology, but I have stayed at a Best Western Hotel so I think that gives me some level of credibility.  Wow as I type that joke I realize how old I am.  Nevertheless, I hope the article below is encouraging and I hope that my explanation is mostly accurate. 

The article below is a sort of question and answer article but it is written in fairly basic verbiage.    Although not disclosed in this article, I read in another article that human trials are about 3-4 years out.    In my humble opinion, the news that might be as important as any other news is that he has money to advance his efforts to finding the cure.  I believe with funding and time, this can be accomplished. 

Look up Thebody.com  Then search... "What if we could finally cure herpes? This scientist is on the case." His name is Keith Jerome.  And if anyone has access to some major discretionary funds, I'm sure he could use any extra funding that would come his way.  From what I see, he is our current and best hope for a cure.

 

[NJRunnerMom]

Thanks for posting this.  A cure would be really nice.  I'd even settle for a vaccine at this point as well to at least protect the people we're with so we can't transmit to anyone regardless of how safe or aware we are.