So, I've been sick for the last 3 and a half weeks...I thought it was strep, but after it didn't go away with penicillin, I went to the doctor
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Unlike herpes, it doesn't seem to have a tendency to show up again and again, you just get it the once.
I've always been confused on that point. When I got mono at the end of my Freshman year, the pamphlet from the student health service said "Mono rarely, if ever, recurs." However, I've had at least one illness afterwards that felt an awful lot like mono and have heard others claim that relapses are the norm.
All the research I've done claims that it's not recurring - like chicken pox. However, it does take an extensive time to recover fully, and I would guess that relapsing to being really sick again after almost fully recovering does happen. Additionally, I know that they're discovering more and more that things we thought stuck around forever, may not. Chicken pox, for instance, some people can get multiple times - because they actually fight off the entire infection, and therefore don't keep antibodies forever. Herpes and HPV are other things that some people get rid of entirely - it's rare, but happens. Given that, I would guess that it's entirely possible to completely kill off your mono virus and not keep long term immunity. Also, while it seems to be ignored in what research I can find, I suppose it would be entirely feasible for it to come back if your immune system was completely trashed by something else, though I'm not finding support for that.
Also it's very very similar to strep throat and the flu, which confuses things.
Yah, it may well be that I had another illness with similar symptoms and called it a relapse.
An article I read on recent HPV research claimed that it is commonplace for people to get rid of HPV. The interesting bit to me was the assertion that at any given time, 14% of the population (not clear how broadly/narrowly 'population' was defined in this case) has HPV, but which 14% is constantly shifting.
It's not clear to me whether research techniques are improving over time or whether different researchers are simply observing different strains in their samples. In the current political climate I suspect that there is a lot less funding for most STD research than there ought to be. AIDS being a significant exception of course.
I miss reading actual research papers when I was in school. All too often the popular press butchers what they report.
I think techniques are improving. The major difference recently has been the increase in PCR testing, rather than ELISA - ie, looking directly for the presence of virus DNA rather than looking for the presence of antibodies for virus. When you test by looking for antibodies, it's much less exact, because antibodies stay around for some years after the virus is gone, but for diseases we assumed stuck around forever, we assumed the presence of antibodies meant the virus was still there. Then we started doing PCR tests... scholar.google is your friend. You can always at least read the abstracts, and there's lots of free articles around if you look hard enough.
14% for HPV is a radically low number, I'd be interested in the article, since more like 75% or higher is the normally quoted number. There's a decent amount of research still happening. Both herpes and HPV have vaccines in studies right now. it's exciting.:)
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I've always been confused on that point. When I got mono at the end of my Freshman year, the pamphlet from the student health service said "Mono rarely, if ever, recurs." However, I've had at least one illness afterwards that felt an awful lot like mono and have heard others claim that relapses are the norm.
What say ye, Biologist?
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However, it does take an extensive time to recover fully, and I would guess that relapsing to being really sick again after almost fully recovering does happen. Additionally, I know that they're discovering more and more that things we thought stuck around forever, may not. Chicken pox, for instance, some people can get multiple times - because they actually fight off the entire infection, and therefore don't keep antibodies forever. Herpes and HPV are other things that some people get rid of entirely - it's rare, but happens.
Given that, I would guess that it's entirely possible to completely kill off your mono virus and not keep long term immunity.
Also, while it seems to be ignored in what research I can find, I suppose it would be entirely feasible for it to come back if your immune system was completely trashed by something else, though I'm not finding support for that.
Also it's very very similar to strep throat and the flu, which confuses things.
Reply
An article I read on recent HPV research claimed that it is commonplace for people to get rid of HPV. The interesting bit to me was the assertion that at any given time, 14% of the population (not clear how broadly/narrowly 'population' was defined in this case) has HPV, but which 14% is constantly shifting.
It's not clear to me whether research techniques are improving over time or whether different researchers are simply observing different strains in their samples. In the current political climate I suspect that there is a lot less funding for most STD research than there ought to be. AIDS being a significant exception of course.
I miss reading actual research papers when I was in school. All too often the popular press butchers what they report.
Reply
The major difference recently has been the increase in PCR testing, rather than ELISA - ie, looking directly for the presence of virus DNA rather than looking for the presence of antibodies for virus. When you test by looking for antibodies, it's much less exact, because antibodies stay around for some years after the virus is gone, but for diseases we assumed stuck around forever, we assumed the presence of antibodies meant the virus was still there. Then we started doing PCR tests...
scholar.google is your friend. You can always at least read the abstracts, and there's lots of free articles around if you look hard enough.
14% for HPV is a radically low number, I'd be interested in the article, since more like 75% or higher is the normally quoted number.
There's a decent amount of research still happening. Both herpes and HPV have vaccines in studies right now. it's exciting.:)
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