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Ep 57 Herpes: Stop the STIgma
This Podcast Will Kill You
The Serious Complications of Ocular Infection With HSB
Herpes simplex virus accounts for 50 to 75% of identified cases of viral encephalitis. The good thing about HSB encephalitis is that we have treatment for it. Neonatal infection, when a baby gets infected in utero, is quite rare actually. It can lead to scarring and blindness.
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Speaker 2
It can lead to scarring and blindness. So that's a pretty severe potential complication from an ocular infection with HSB. Okay,
Speaker 1
two questions about
Speaker 2
that. Oh gosh, okay. Number one, how,
Speaker 1
what is the incidence of that? Good question. And
Speaker 2
then I don't have a number on that. I do not know. Okay.
Speaker 1
And then the other question is, could that be from an oral HSB, one infection just like manifesting, like the the vesicles manifesting in your eyes or
Speaker 2
what? It's such a good question, Erin. So I don't fully know. So let me answer that question in round about by talking about the other serious complication. And that is encephalitis. Okay. Okay. So herpes encephalitis is very rare. We're talking like between two and four cases per one million worldwide. Wow. That's very rare. Okay. It's very rare. However, it is the most common cause of viral encephalitis in the United States and probably across the world, but we just have good data for the United States. Wow. Yeah. So herpes simplex virus accounts for 50 to 75% of identified cases of viral encephalitis. A lot of viral encephalitis, we're just like, we don't know what caused this. But when we can figure out what caused it, 50 to 75% of the time, it's HSB. Okay. And we've talked about encephalitis, kind of a lot actually on this podcast. We actually have. We just did the triple E.
Speaker 1
Yeah. And
Speaker 2
then we did fully we've done encephalitis with the fargi. Yeah. So you know that that's infection of your brain itself. In the case of herpes, it tends to infect the temporal lobe and or the frontal lobe. But so it causes just kind of the same generic encephalitis symptoms. So mental status changes, confusion, behavior changes, headache, seizures. You can have neurologic deficits. But the good thing about HSB encephalitis is that we have treatment for it. Oh, cool. Yeah. But it is super high mortality, like 70% mortality rate if it's untreated. Oh my gosh. It's very serious. But again, very rare. Yeah. And what's interesting about encephalitis in this gets to your question about how you get the eye infection, you can get potentially HSB encephalitis from either a primary or from a recurrent infection.
Speaker 1
Okay. Okay. So it could just be random.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah. Is it more common with HSB one than two? Yes. Great question. It's absolutely the vast majority of cases are HSB one. Okay. That makes sense. That
Speaker 1
also makes sense that it's the number that it makes sense that it's the number one cause because so many people as you'll talk about, like everyone is infected with HSB. Yeah, exactly. Like it's everyone. Yeah. Yep. And then
Speaker 2
yeah, the other serious complication is neonatal infection. So that's when a baby gets infected. It is possible for a fetus to get infected in utero, but it's quite rare actually.
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