Herpes Cure?

[Gandalf]

Do you think there will ever be a cure for herpes? I read another post on these boards about how the herpes vaccine study was stopped and I can't help but wonder.

I looked online and saw some stories about herpes research at Duke that might actually provide a cure one day. It was on a CNN blog at When will we see a herpes cure? – The Chart - CNN.com Blogs.

What do you think? How does this work?

[Victoria]

Herpes sets up shop and "hides" in a latent form in nerve cells, where none of our therapies can reach it. Once herpes wakes up, starts making copies of itself, and leading to outbreaks, the HSV antivirals on the market are very good at finding and killing the active virus. When it retreats back to hiding, though, it can't be touched. What if we had a way to prevent it from hiding, though?

It's still experimental, but the idea behind this research is that if we can find a way to drive the herpes virus out of its latency, so that it's forced to wake up and not able to hide, if you will, then it could be killed. IF, and that's still a big if, such a thing were successful then it might be possible to cure the virus. Who knows? It is fascinating to think about, isn't it!