The Case Against Herpes

One of man's more troublesome enemies is the family of herpes viruses. The 50 odd variants of the virus are responsible for a number of painful and occasionally dangerous conditions, including shingles, a form of encephalitis and an eruption of blisters in infants with eczema. Recently, however, medical researchers have been focusing their attention on herpes simplex, a type of the virus long known to be responsible for a relatively minor affliction, the cold sore. Their findings have provided both good and bad news. The good news: several promising methods have been developed to treat the sores. The bad: a variation of herpes simplex that produces genital infections may also be linked with cervical cancer.

The two types of herpes simplex generally attack different and sharply defined areas of the body. Doctors believe that nearly everybody carries the herpes simplex virus somewhere in his body, probably in nerve tissue. In most people this virus remains dormant. But in some it becomes active, usually during a cold or fever, after a sunburn or as a result of nervous tension. The result is usually cold sores or fever blisters, unpleasant but rarely harmful eruptions that often recur at the same place on the lips or below the nose.

Promiscuous. The variant virus, herpes simplex type II, usually attacks below the waist. It causes painful sores and swelling on the thighs, buttocks and genital areas. Unlike the basic herpes simplex, which strikes indiscriminately, type II appears to exercise moral judgment -tending to afflict primarily the sexually promiscuous. It is prevalent among teen-agers and young adults and among prostitutes, but is rare in children and in celibate women. In fact, according to Bernard Roizman, professor of microbiology at the University of Chicago, genital herpes is the second most common venereal disease in the U.S., trailing only gonorrhea. Roizman and others have found that the infection is common among those who come to clinics for treatment of other venereal diseases.

Unfortunately for the promiscuous, there is often no clinical evidence that a sexual partner is carrying the virus. Ysolina Centifanto, an associate professor of microbiology at the University of Florida College of Medicine, studied 263 men from a wide range of social and economic groups. Thirty-nine, none of whom had a history of active genital herpes, were found to carry the virus in their genitourinary tracts.

Although there was until recently no really effective treatment for herpes simplex infections of either type, there are now several promising techniques. Houston's Dr. Troy Felber has found that painting herpes simplex sores with light-sensitive dyes and then exposing them to light from a fluorescent tube cuts the healing time* by 50%. Drs. G. Robert Nugent and Samuel Chou of the West Virginia University Medical Center recently reported that applications of ordinary ether or chloroform will clear up herpes sores in as little as two days, apparently by altering the virus so as to make it more vulnerable to the body's natural defenses. Other doctors are finding the antiviral drug isoprinosine effective. An oral drug that seems to bolster the body's immune response to the virus (TIME, March 19), isoprinosine has been used against both herpes simplex and genital herpes infections and has stopped progression of the disease and initiated healing within 48 hours. So far, however, one goal has eluded scientists: finding a drug that will prevent herpes infections.

Ominous. That goal has now assumed greater importance. Mothers with genital herpes can pass the virus on to their offspring, who may develop skin lesions and internal infections. The virus may also be responsible for more serious illness in the carriers themselves. Type II virus particles have been found to transform normal animal cells into cancerous ones in test tubes, and the discovery has raised speculation that the type II herpes may be linked to genital cancers in humans. "It's like finding a guy with a gun in a building where a murder has been committed," says Alvin Glasky of Newport Pharmaceuticals International, Inc., the firm that developed isoprinosine. "The gunman is suspect, but you have to prove that he pulled the trigger."

Genetic substances of herpes viruses have also been isolated from the cells of women with cervical cancer. There is other ominous evidence linking the virus with malignancy. Dr. Andre Nahmias and his colleagues at Atlanta's Emory University have been conducting a long-range study of 900 women known to have had genital herpes, comparing them with 600 women who have not had the infection. The incidence of cervical cancer is eight times higher in the first group than the second.

* Which, for untreated sores, can be as long as three to six weeks for first outbreak and from one to two weeks for later infections.

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