DNA Restriction-Enzyme Analysis of Herpes Simplex Virus Isolates Obtained from Patients with Encephalitis

Herpes simplex encephalitis is a devastating disease in persons of all ages, even in those given antiviral therapy.1 During the course of collaborative studies of antiviral therapy for herpes simplex encephalitis, we noted eight patients from whom herpes simplex viruses were isolated concomitantly from the brain and from oral or labial sites. Our prior investigations using restriction-endonuclease analyses of viral DNA had demonstrated that strains of herpes simplex viruses within a type, either 1 or 2, were identical if epidemiologically related.2 3 4 Specifically, analyses of viral DNA demonstrate that the virus in recurrent herpetic lesions of individual patients and in contacts . . .