Research Information System
RESEARCH DAY, Tennessee, United States Of America, 20 September 2021, pp.6
“Controlling the HSV-1 infection by metabolic manipulation”
Engin Berber, Logan Miller, Barry Rouse
HSV is one of the causative viral agents of eye lesions and herpetic encephalitis. The role of immune-mediated latency and reactivation has been described but how metabolic changes can affect the outcomes of acute infection is poorly understood. Thus, we suspect that some changes in host metabolism could influence the function of the immune cells and outcomes can be either beneficial or detrimental. By using an encephalitis and eye model mice, we showed inhibition of glucose metabolism results in less ocular damage but reduced survival due to the development of encephalitis. Inhibition of immune cell functions in the trigeminal ganglia where virus establishes the latency suspected to cause the encephalitis. Furthermore, we showed that mice that received the glucose-controlling agent, metformin, had an increased survival rate. Together, we conclude that targeting metabolism during the acute HSV infection may be the key to controlling the HSV and outcomes of infection.