Aaron Boster

Wow.

And so low levels of vitamin D pre-puberty also change the risk.

We then think that your body sees an infection and we think we've nailed it down to the kissing flu, to mononucleosis, EBV.

Yeah.

And your body contracts EBV and your immune system identifies it as a bad guy.

And your immune system makes an arsenal of T cells and B cells that make antibodies against EBV.

What's up?

So amen.

Yep.

That's exactly right.

And so you survived mono because your immune system cleared it and you keep an arsenal against mono the rest of your life.

But in some people, those same cells that identify mono by accident now identify your brain as mono.

And so that's called cross reactivity, like where the antibody binds to something it's not supposed to.

And when that happens, when that gets set up, we don't know how to undo it.

Now, it's really a little bit interesting because we've known that mono could have potentially been requisite to develop MS.

But they did a really cool study with the Veterans Administration Hospital with 10 million Americans, like a lot of Americans.

And what they found was 95% of that population has been exposed to mono.

You have, I have.

But...

Of the 800 people in the study with MS, all of them but one had been exposed to mono.