Bell’s palsy and lip HSV-1 infection: importance of subcutaneous access

Abstract

Although HSV-1 has been implicated in facial palsy for a long time, testing and treating for HSV is not routine. The lack of a meaningful demonstration of how HSV-1 would cause facial palsy has limited progress in this field. Herein we demonstrate that the depth of the lip HSV-1 infection defines the course of the disease, with deeper subcutaneous infection allowing virus access to the facial nerve and causing facial palsy. HSV-1 inoculated subcutaneously caused extensive facial paralysis in cotton rats Sigmodon hispidus, while virus inoculated in the same area of the lip by skin surface abrasion did not. Demyelination along the facial nerve (CN VII) accompanied subcutaneous HSV-1 infection and was identified as the possible underlying mechanism of the disease. This causality demonstration is particularly important in light of increased facial palsy outbreaks associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection and SARS-CoV-2 and influenza vaccinations.

Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis: a possible connection through the viral demyelinating neurodegenerative trigger (vDENT)

“…One example here may include a specific age at which the first (acute) infection occurs, and whether it happens in a susceptible child/adolescent or an adult. Our studies in cotton rats indicate that demyelination in the CNS after lip HSV-1 infection occurs prevalently in young animals, when brain plasticity is still high, and that demyelination and disease in animals infected with HSV-1 for the first time as "adults" are less pronounced (Boukhvalova et al, 2019(Boukhvalova et al, , 2022. This finding is important as it may indicate that vDENT hypothesis of MS/AD connection applies specifically to select pediatric-onset MS cases (Thompson et al, 2018).…”

“…These strains are used to study developmental defects, epilepsy, spontaneous tumorigenesis, myopathy, and/or autoimmunity, all of which may affect CNS manifestations. Cotton rats S. hispidus are not prone to these disorders and, instead, have proven to be a reliable translational model of human viral diseases (Boukhvalova et al, 2009(Boukhvalova et al, , 2015(Boukhvalova et al, , 2018(Boukhvalova et al, , 2022. The lip HSV-1 infection in S. hispidus delivered by abrasion caused multifocal demyelination in the CNS, followed by remyelination and formation of MS-like plaques (Boukhvalova et al, 2019).…”