After having mononucleosis, people still carry a bit of the infection in 1/10,000 Beta immune cells. However, in Lupus patients, it is found in 1/400 Beta cells and this stimulates immune responses that become autoimmune in nature. Mononucleosis virus is a nasty virus, implicated in Multiple Sclerosis ( MS ) and interstitial cystitis (IC). In Africa it is a major cause of Burkitt lymphoma and now, one wonders how much more it effects. Rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn’s bowel disease has been suggested.
Younis, S., Moutusy, S. I., Rasouli, S., Jahanbani, S., Pandit, M., Wu, X., … & Robinson, W. H.
. Epstein-Barr virus reprograms autoreactive B cells as antigen-presenting cells in systemic lupus erythematosus.
Science Translational Medicine, 17(824), eady0210. (2025)
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Shady-Younis/publication/397549327_Epstein-Barr_virus_reprograms_autoreactive_B_cells_as_antigen-presenting_cells_in_systemic_lupus_erythematosus/links/69163e5f7b9a7247db4cdd1e/Epstein-Barr-virus-reprograms-autoreactive-B-cells-as-antigen-presenting-cells-in-systemic-lupus-erythematosus.pdf
- EBV was stained in Immune Beta cells and found 25 times more common in lupus patients.
- Extensive effort was made to document that changes done to create an autoimmune process
Good article on it:
Stanford Medicine scientists tie lupus to a virus nearly all of us carry
Bruce Goldman
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2025/11/lupus-epstein-barr.html
Question is what does one do?
- This is like an HIV issue – once the virus is intracellular, it become more difficult to eradicate.
- 19/20 people have had it
- Does not explain why 9/10 cases of lupus are women.
- “about 20% of the B cells in our bodies are autoreactive. They target antigens belonging to our own tissues — not by design, but due to the random way B-cell diversity comes about: through sloppy replication, apparently engineered by evolution to ensure diversification.” (re above)
- Vaccine is FINALLY being looked into but considering many get mononucleovirus in daycare, this will need to be given in infancy.
- Thoughts about targeting beta cells was discussed and a plan to delete beta cells and give new batch into bone marrow is being worked on.
Vitamin D has been shown to help prevent onset of later MS in military recruits:
Munger KL, Levin LI, Hollis BW, Howard NS, Ascherio A.
Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Levels and Risk of Multiple Sclerosis.
JAMA. 2006;296(23):2832–2838.
doi:10.1001/jama.296.23.2832
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/204651/
Vitamin D supplementation helps fatigue in lupus but does not seem to effect the autoimmune process:
Ronghao Zheng, Alex Gonzalez, Jing Yue, Xiaolin Wu, Ming Qiu, Lin Gui, Songbai Zhu, Li Huang,
Efficacy and Safety of Vitamin D Supplementation in Patients With Systemic Lupus Erythematosus: A Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials,
The American Journal of the Medical Sciences,
Volume 358, Issue 2, 2019, Pages 104-114,
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0002962919301752
Hydroxychloroquine and belimumab have been shown to help Lupus some longterm but these are big league drugs..
Askanase, A. D., Furie, R. A., Dall’Era, M., Bomback, A. S., Schwarting, A., Zhao, M. H., … & Urowitz, M. B. . Disease-modifying therapies in systemic lupus erythematosus for extrarenal manifestations.
Lupus Science & Medicine, 11(1), (2024)
https://lupus.bmj.com/content/lupusscimed/11/1/e001124.full.pdf
Comment – One wonders, if chronic mononucleosis will be treated like chronic HIV...
The low vitamin D environment has to change. It fuels autoimmunity, osteoarthritis, cancer
and even opioid addiction:
Kemény, Lajos V., et al.
Vitamin D deficiency exacerbates UV/endorphin and opioid addiction.
Science advances 7.24 (2021): eabe4577.
https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/sciadv.abe4577
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