As the herpes virus spreads and produces cold sores on the skin, it goes through a "bottleneck" of sorts — which could mean the virus is vulnerable to treatments at this stage, a new study suggests.
The researchers looked at the herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), which many people become infected with during childhood. HSV-1 hides inside nerve cells, and can remain dormant for years, before making its way into skin cells and producing a cold sore.
The researchers found that although hundreds of virus particles may be lying dormant inside the nerve cells, just one or two make the trip to spread to a skin cell, said study researcher Lynn Enquist, a professor of molecular biology at Princeton University in New Jersey. Once inside a skin cell, the virus then multiplies and spreads to other skin cells, creating a cold sore.
This bottleneck could be "a point where the infection is more susceptible to drug treatments, if we had them," Enquist said.
Read more at LiveScience
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