In 2010, a university lecturer from Colorado started experiencing worrying signs of cognitive decline.
The lecturer—a 63-year-old viral immunologist whose identity has been kept anonymous—suffered alarming symptoms, including impaired memory, waning concentration, and difficulty reading. While giving lectures to students, he found he had difficulty focusing and was often unable to finish sentences without pausing. But medical tests, including a brain biopsy, failed to get to the source of the problem, and over the next four years, his symptoms continued to progress.
His decline would have likely continued unabated had he not heard about a case of encephalitis—serious brain inflammation caused by a reactivation of the varicella-zoster
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