Call for abstracts!

2008 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HHV-6 & 7
JUNE 19-22ND
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, USA
See conference website for details

Chairs: Drs. Robert Gallo and Phillip Pellett

Workshop on HHV-6 & 7 in CNS Disease
HHV-6 & Epilepsy and Status Epilepticus
HHV-6A in MS
HHV-6A & B, HHV-6 in Encephalitis
Satellite Conference on Viruses in CFS – June 22nd – June 23rd

• Stanford’s Jose Montoya is currently conducting a Roche sponsored placebo controlled trial of Valcyte in a subset of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients with elevated antibodies to HHV-6 and EBV, after a pilot treatment program showed promise.

• HHV-6A was associated with rhomboencephalitis in immunocompetent children, characterized by new onset seizures, ataxia and opsoclonus-myoclonus. (Crawford 2007)

• HHV-6 was found in 79% of lymph nodes from Hodgkin’s Lymphoma patients
(Lacroix, 2007) compared to EBV in 62%.

• HHV-6B was associated with post-transplant acute limbic encephalitis, characterized by anterograde amnesia, syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion and temporal lobe abnormalities. (Seeley 2007)

• HHV-6 antibody titers were elevated in army recruits six to 12 months previous to diagnosis with schizophrenia (Niebuhr, 2007)

• HHV-6 was frequently found in the gastroduodenal mucosa of transplant and immunocompetent patients with gastroenteritis; 94% of transplant recipients with biliary complications had HHV-6 or CMV in the duodenal mucosa. (Halme 2008)

• Two thirds of resections from patients with refractory mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) were found to have very high levels HHV-6B infection (Fotheringham, 2007); chronic viral infection may alter glutamate transport to cause seizures. (Fotheringham b, 2007)