Einstein study reveals new approach for stopping herpes infections

“We've essentially identified the molecular “key” that herpes viruses use to penetrate cell membranes and infect cells of the human body,” said Betsy Herold, M.D., professor of pediatrics (infectious diseases), of microbiology & immunology and of obstetrics & gynecology and women's health at Einstein and attending physician of pediatrics, The Children's Hospital at Montefiore.

Herpes viruses are known to infect skin cells as well as cells lining the cervix and the genital tract. A 2006 JAMA study estimates that nearly 60 percent of U.S. men and women between the ages of 14 and 49 carry the HSV-1 virus. The CDC estimates that about 1 in 6 Americans (16.2 percent) between 14 and 49 are infected with herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2), according to a 2010 national health survey. HSV-2 is a lifelong and incurable infection that can cause recurrent and painful genital sores and can make those infected with the virus two-to-three times more likely to acquire HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Dr. Herold and her colleagues had previously shown that infection by the herpes viruses depends on calcium released within the cells. In this study, they found that calcium release occurs because the viruses activate a critical cell-signaling molecule called Akt at the cell membrane.

As part of their investigation of Akt's role in herpes infections, the researchers took laboratory cultures of those human cell types and mixed them for 15 minutes with four different drugs known to inhibit Akt. The cells were then exposed for one hour to herpes simplex virus 2. All four drugs significantly inhibited herpes virus infection in each of the cell types. By contrast, cells not pretreated with the Akt inhibitors were readily infected on exposure to the virus.

“For people infected with herpes, the drug acyclovir helps prevent herpes outbreaks from recurring and lowers the risk of transmitting the infection to others,” said Dr. Herold. “But some people have herpes infections that don't respond to acyclovir, and unfortunately there is no effective vaccine. So new approaches for suppressing and treating herpes infections are badly needed, and our findings indicate that inhibiting Akt should be a useful therapeutic strategy to pursue.”

The paper “HSV activates Akt to trigger calcium release and promote viral entry: novel candidate target for treatment and suppression” was published online by The FASEB Journal. In addition to Dr. Herold, other authors of the paper (all of them at Einstein) were lead author Natalia Cheshenko, Ph.D., Janie B. Trepanier, Ph.D., Martha Stefanidou, Niall Buckley, Pablo Gonzalez and William Jacobs, Jr., Ph.D. The research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (AI-061679) and the Center for AIDS Research at Einstein and Montefiore Medical Center (AI-51519).

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University is one of the nation's premier centers for research, medical education and clinical investigation. In 2012, Einstein received over $160 million in awards from the NIH for major research centers at Einstein in diabetes, cancer, liver disease, and AIDS, as well as other areas. Through its affiliation with Montefiore Medical Center, the University Hospital for Einstein, and six other hospital systems, the College of Medicine runs one of the largest residency and fellowship training programs in the medical and dental professions in the United States. For more information, please visit http://www.einstein.yu.edu and follow us on Twitter @EinsteinMed.

Media Contact

Kim Newman EurekAlert!

More Information:

http://www.einstein.yu.edu

All latest news from the category: Health and Medicine

This subject area encompasses research and studies in the field of human medicine.

Among the wide-ranging list of topics covered here are anesthesiology, anatomy, surgery, human genetics, hygiene and environmental medicine, internal medicine, neurology, pharmacology, physiology, urology and dental medicine.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Lighting up the future

New multidisciplinary research from the University of St Andrews could lead to more efficient televisions, computer screens and lighting. Researchers at the Organic Semiconductor Centre in the School of Physics and…

Researchers crack sugarcane’s complex genetic code

Sweet success: Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants….

Evolution of the most powerful ocean current on Earth

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current plays an important part in global overturning circulation, the exchange of heat and CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere, and the stability of Antarctica’s ice sheets….

Partners & Sponsors