Alberto Ascherio began his career as a young doctor treating tropical diseases in South American rainforests and parts of Africa. Over the next quarter-century, he made his way to what is now his wheelhouse: studying the links between viruses and neurodegenerative diseases.
Perhaps none of his projects have generated as much attention as his 2022 paper, which offered strong evidence, through a 20-year study of more than 10 million people, that infection with the Epstein-Barr virus, most commonly known for causing mononucleosis, increased the likelihood of developing multiple sclerosis by more than 32-fold. That finding, which happened to come out during the Covid pandemic, has since driven renewed research and investment in both multiple sclerosis and efforts to develop a vaccine against Epstein-Barr, and added to a wave of research on the viral roots of various chronic diseases.
Read more at: https://www.statnews.com/2023/03/16/alberto-ascherio-multiple-sclerosis-als/
