Recovery of Herpes Simplex Virus from Human Sacral Ganglions

Abstract

HERPES simplex virus is well known for its propensity to cause recurrent oral or genital mucosal infections in man. A variety of clinical observations have suggested that in the interval between overt infections, the virus may reside in neural tissue.1 These circumstances include the frequent occurrence of numbness or tingling before the mucosal eruption, the reliable provocation of oral lesions by surgical manipulation of the trigeminal sensory root,2 and the absence of such lesions in areas previously denervated by section of one or more divisions of the trigeminal nerve.3 Recently, the virus has been recovered from trigeminal ganglions of unselected . . .