ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a number of treatments and attempts at prevention of human herpesvirus infections. Herpesviruses have been found by a number of investigators to be latent in the nervous system and other tissues of asymptomatic individuals. Latent herpesvirus infections may involve mechanisms other than transformation to produce “true” latency. A large number of pyrimidine analogs have been used to treat experimental and human herpesvirus infections, predominantly herpes simplex virus (HSV). The concept of latency and periodic symptomatic or asymptomatic reactivation makes some approaches to treatment difficult. In studies of HSV, infectious virus has been isolated from the trigeminal and dorsal root ganglia of latently infected humans and from experimental animals similarly infected with the virus. HSV type 1 causes symptomatic infection, usually gingivostomatitis, or an asymptomatic infection in most individuals. Thus, varicella-zoster virus may be latent in dorsal root ganglia of the spinal cord and, upon reactivation, cause clinically apparent herpes zoster.
