Odds are, you have it. By the age of 40, nearly 90 percent of adults in the United States have been exposed to the herpes simplex virus-1 (HSV1) that causes cold sores. Not everyone who has the virus lurking in their body will have symptoms, but those who do will be annoyed for life by unexpected lip blisters. But now
the secret of how the cold sore virus manages to persist for a lifetime in the human body may have been cracked [BBC News], and researchers say their findings may point the way towards a treatment that could kill the virus once and for all.
The virus is a difficult target. When a cold sore appears, it's easily treatable with a drug that kills the replicating virus, but that drug can't get to the latent versions of the virus that are hiding within nerve cells and waiting to cause the ...
