Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Handel, Adam E
• Williamson, Alexander J
• Disanto, Giulio
• Handunnetthi, Lahiru
• Giovannoni, Gavin
• Ramagopalan, Sreeram V
• Jacobson, Steven

Titel

An updated meta-analysis of risk of multiple sclerosis following infectious mononucleosis

Ist Teil von

• PloS one, 2010-09, Vol.5 (9), p.e12496

Ort / Verlag

United States: Public Library of Science

Erscheinungsjahr

2010

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

EZB Free E-Journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Multiple sclerosis (MS) appears to develop in genetically susceptible individuals as a result of environmental exposures. Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection is an almost universal finding among individuals with MS. Symptomatic EBV infection as manifested by infectious mononucleosis (IM) has been shown in a previous meta-analysis to be associated with the risk of MS, however a number of much larger studies have since been published. We performed a Medline search to identify articles published since the original meta-analysis investigating MS risk following IM. A total of 18 articles were included in this study, including 19390 MS patients and 16007 controls. We calculated the relative risk of MS following IM using a generic inverse variance with random effects model. This showed that the risk of MS was strongly associated with IM (relative risk (RR) 2.17; 95% confidence interval 1.97-2.39; p<10(-54)). Our results establish firmly that a history of infectious mononucleosis significantly increases the risk of multiple sclerosis. Future work should focus on the mechanism of this association and interaction with other risk factors.