ABSTRACT
Herpes simplex virus (HSV) is a human pathogenic virus that causes infection worldwide. We have studied the levels of total immunoglobulins and HSV specific immunoglobulins then the results were correlated with the latency. In this study, we enrolled 323 subjects, and blood was collected from 183 HSV active infections (94 were HSV-1 positive and 89 were HSV-2 positive), recently healed (58 HSV-1 and 48 HSV-2) and 140 age and sex controlled negative individuals. HSV positivity of the collected samples was confirmed by PCR. Total IgG and HSV specific IgG were tested by ELISA. The mean total serum IgG of HSV-1 cases was 554 pg/ml and HSV-2 cases was 696 pg/ml. Interestingly during active infection, there was a preponderance of IgG1 (mean 185 pg/ml for HSV-1 and 195 pg/ml for HSV-2) compared to IgG2 (mean 35 pg/ml of HSV-1 and 28 pg/ml of HSV-2). However, among the recently healed individuals, the total IgG remains similar but there was an up-regulation of IgG2 that was noticed in the ranges of 185 pg/ml HSV-1 and 205 pg/ml HSV-2. Interestingly the IgG1 was the vice versa (30 pg/ml for HSV-1 and 32 pg/ml for HSV-2) importantly, healthy controls had negligible anti-HSV antibodies. From this study, we could confirm that presence of IgG1 antibodies is non-protective against HSV infections as seen among the non-healers. However, the presence 252of IgG2 is protective as noticed among the recent healers, it is long known that Th-1 cytokine is associated with IgG2 antibody production and Th-2 cytokines promote IgG1. Taken together it becomes much clearer that during HSV infections Th-1 cells are protective and Th-2 cells are detrimental to the host.
