SOC
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I was under the impression that these viruses have to entre the general circulation to replicate etc so even if the av's dont cross the blood brain barrier, eventually the av's get them when they try to replicate by going into the general circulation. This helps lower the viral load and also is why people have to be on av's for so long, but im not 100% on this.
cheers!!!
We need an expert here. Wish we could get one.
There are so many subtle details that are hard for us laypeople to keep up with. I read a lot, but there's very little I'm sure about.
This is what I'd heard... I found it again at the HHV-6 Foundation website
http://www.hhv-6foundation.org/research/hhv-6-testing
PCR DNA tests can detect HHV-6 in the serum during primary roseola infections and in acute transplant reactivations, but they cannot determine reliably if a patient has a chronic central nervous system (CNS) infection that has reactivated , because there is so little virus circulating outside of the tissues. HHV-6A & B viruses (especially HHV-6A) migrate to the central nervous system and other organs and away from the bloodstream. HHV-6A has been found to persist in the spinal fluid long after it has disappeared from the plasma.
[My bolding]Furthermore, in many viral infections, large numbers of virions spill into the plasma when the virus is replicating but this is not the case with HHV-6 because it is spread largely cell-to-cell or directly through the cells walls. The net result is that very little of it ends up in the serum so PCR tests must be extremely sensitive to detect persistent HHV-6 infections, once the acute phase is over.