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Asked by anon-350285 to James on 15 Mar 2023.
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James Harris answered on 15 Mar 2023:
Thats a great question – I could turn the question back to you and ask the really difficult question of ‘is a virus dead or alive’.
Its an interesting question for sure. If someone is taking drugs to cure their viral infection, one way of reviving the virus is to stop the drug treatment. You’d probably see the viruses bounce back, some times to full strength again.
Some viruses actually try their best to go dormant, and almost turn themselves off so that they dont have to constantly battle against our immune system. You might have seen some with a cold sore on their lip? Thats caused by a type of herpesvirus. This virus will actually stay with the person forever! But it’ll almost hibernate in the cells, and then when you’re stressed, or you get another infection, or your immune system isn’t overly happy about something they virus turns itself on. It activates its genes and causes another cold sore!
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Comments
Edward commented on :
Depends what you mean by ‘revive’. I store viruses at very low temperature in liquid nitrogen and they are okay for years. If you store them under the right conditions, they are active when thawed out. However, a more interesting question is around viruses that remain ‘dormant’ inside our body, and why they reactivate (revive). There are a number of viruses that, after we get an initial viral illness, hide their DNA or RNA inside our cells. They remain dormant and can reactivate years later (think Herpes simplex virus/cold sores, Varicella zoster virus/shingles, etc.). There’s plenty of science still to be done around what can trigger these reactivations, and how this works.