Sorry, off-topic: TWIV on YouTube just reviewed two new papers that show the relationship between Epstein-Barr virus and Multiple Sclerosis right down to the molecular level! Pretty simple: People have different HLA types (What they match for transplants). These are the molecules that stick out of cells and "present" foreign antigens (like virus epitopes) to the T-cells. T-cells talk to B-cells and convince them to make a bunch of antibodies against the foreign epitopes.
Humans with normal immune systems start out with B-cells that make antibodies against every possible epitope (a series of amino acids the immune system can react against) . They even make antibodies against everything you could possibly be allergic to. These antibodies go through a testing phase, so every antibody against "self" is knocked out. This is why we don't all die as infants of autoimmune diseases.
But when people with the right HLA types get Epstein-Barr virus (which 90% of us have) it can turn on production of a certain antibody. That keeps the EBV in check. But the new antibodies also undergo something called "somatic hypermutation" in which the antibody genes get varied enough to protect us from virus variants we may encounter in the future. One (or a few) of those mutated antibodies cross reacts with a protein used by oligodendrocyctes, the cells that make myelin. They stop or are impaired in making new myelin (nerve cell insulation) and voila: You have MS.
You can go back and read through that again. This will be on the test.
So the interesting question is would an Epsein-Barr vaccine give a bunch of people MS? I think it could, if you used the wrong virus epitope to make the vaccine. The first Pasteur rabies vaccine used rabbit spinal cord to grow the virus before killing the "live" virus, and it did tend to give people autoimmune paralysis when they cross-reacted to the nerve cells..
