Virology, Emerging Diseases & vaccines

Neurovirology

Neurovirology is the study of the viruses which infect nervous system. Viral infections of brain are way too complicated to understand due to multiple reasons. One of the main reasons is unpredictable pattern of action of viruses due to this much of the experiments carried out are based on testing the hypothesis which is a major drawback.

Viral infections of the brain are very rare than any other infections because unlike other infections brain infections depend upon the breakdown and passage through the blood brain barrier which is very difficult and occurs very rarely. Viruses cause neurological problems through a number of mechanisms like causing cell lysis, inducing apoptosis or by creating secondary damage due to release of glutamate. Viruses such as rabies do not kill neurons but they alter cellular transcriptional pathways to express viral genes rather than neuronal genes, these results in neurons that no longer function as neurons, but look normal upon routine pathological examination making it difficult for the pathologist to identify the virus.