SANTA BARBARA, CA (June 14, 2012) A ten-year NIH-funded study
has determined that a third of infants with prolonged seizures
and fever suffer from either a new or reactivated roseola virus
infection. Roseola viruses are the cause of the common childhood
rash, but can also cause limbic encephalitis, a condition that
frequently progresses to epilepsy. Investigators discovered one
of the roseola viruses, human herpesvirus-6B (HHV-6B) in the
blood of 32% of 169 infants with prolonged seizures, a condition
known as status epilepticus. They found HHV-7 (another roseola
virus) in 7.1% of the patients, usually as a co-infection with
HHV-6B. The study strengthens the link between HHV-6B and mesial
temporal lobe epilepsy. HHV-6B is the primary cause of limbic
encephalitis in transplant patients and half of those cases go
on to develop epilepsy within 3-5 years. Furthermore, several
studies have found HHV-6B DNA at high levels in the brain tissue
of patients with refractory epilepsy. "A clinical trial is
urgently needed