I have a history of Mono, and for me, swollen lymph in the neck is one of my major symptoms which constantly flares up. Being a prevalent symptom of Mono, it always struck me as important. Perhaps those of us with a history of Mono, and tender lymph in the neck might need to pay close attention to this research.
A few years ago, I asked my doctor to prescribe me valacyclovir, which is a herpes virus viral DNA polymerase inhibitor. I personally found that my own health improved slowly in the years following.
The way this treatment works, is by blocking the function of the virus encoded DNA polymerase, limiting the capacity of the virus to infect new cells. Unfortunately, it mainly impacts cells which are undergoing lytic infection. The lytic infection cycle relies on the virus encoded DNA polymerase to replicate, however the latent lifecycles of the virus use human DNA polymerase instead, and the virus is replicated during cell division. Latently infected cells do not create new virions, however latently infected cells can 'switch' to lytic infection.
What this means, is that in order to lower the amount of latently infected cells, you need to basically keep taking acyclovir for extended periods and wait for latently infected B-cells to either die off, or switch to lytic mode.
From
this paper, "Based on the half-life of EBV in patients treated with valacyclovir and assuming that valacyclovir acts similarly on B cells in tissues as it does in the blood, we estimate that it would take 6 years of 500 mg of valacyclovir once each day to eradicate 99% of EBV from the B-cell compartment and 11.3 years to eliminate the virus completely from the body if persons were not reinfected during this time. Reinfection with the virus is likely, however, since multiple strains of EBV are detected in many individuals, suggesting that multiple episodes of infection occur (
22). The mean peak concentration of acyclovir reaches 27.1 μM when valacyclovir is given at 1,000 mg three times a day (
16), while the 50% effective inhibitory dose of acyclovir for EBV replication is 5 to 10 μM (
7,
21,
24). Therefore, it might be theoretically possible to eradicate EBV from the body within several years with high-dose valacyclovir."
Just incase anyone is interested, I take only 500mg daily.