How Do You Know When EBV Is Active?

How Do You Know When EBV Is Active? There are several tests you can to do to answer this question.  These test look at different Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) antibodies your body makes when exposed to EBV. Understanding and interpreting the test results can be a little tricky so I will go into some detail on this topic.  We will look at how testing can differentiate EBV that is a current active infection, a reactivated or latent infection or dormant past infection.  There are different antibodies tests and levels of positivity for each of the tests.  Reference article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti... Epstein-Barr is known also as EBV and is a virus in the human herpes virus family.  It is responsible for Mono or Mononucleosis.  Mononucleosis occurs when there's an initial acute infection with EBV or the Epstein-Barr virus.  You will know you have active Epstein-Barr, if you've been diagnosed with Mono recently.   Once a person recovers from this virus it always going to live in your body.  This is true of al herpes viruses.  These people can go on to get a resurgence of symptoms months or even years later.  This is called latent or reactivation of Epstein-Barr virus.   When you have a latent or reactivation of Epstein-Barr virus sometimes it is also referred to as active Epstein-Barr Virus.   Really it should be referred to as reactivated.  IN addition, some people initially contract Epstein-Barr Virus and they never really get sick with classic Mono symptoms.  Some don't have any symptoms.  In these cases they were just exposed and their immune system like fought it off.  However, even if you were exposed without full-blown Mono or other symptoms, you can still get latent, reactivation, or active Epstein-Barr later on. Like Mono the symptoms associated with active or reactivation of Epstein-Barr Virus are fatigue most common.   Since fatigue can have many different causes, it's important to test and see how likely your fatigue is coming from the EBV.  So the testing can be a little tricky.  With testing though we can distinguish between initial active Epstein-Barr virus that would be commonly associated with Mono, reactivation, or dormant Epstein-Barr.  The challenging part of testing is distinguishing a reactivation versus a dormant infection.  so how do You know when EBV is active requires a deeper understanding of antibodies and how your immune system makes these antibodies a virus like EBV.  So let's look at some of that.  The initial infection is straightforward to detect and look at.  However we need a little bit more understanding of how your immune system makes antibodies.  When your immune system sees the Epstein-Barr Virus proteins, it is able to recognize that those proteins are foreign and different than self.  It starts to make antibodies against them.  These initial antibodies are going to be in the IgM category.  For EBV these IgM antibodies will fade fairly quickly after the initial infection.  As they fade they are replaced by a different type of antibody called IgG antibody.  So you will know if epsilon bar virus is active when you check your blood and you see these antibodies.  If you have any of the IgM antibodies then you have an active infection.  Some people have IgM antibodies for longer than we would typically expect.  Most people will not have the IgM antibodies after about four months or so.  However, it can happen.