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Updated: May 20, 2026

Separation of Immune Cell Subpopulations in Peripheral Blood Samples from Children with Infectious Mononucleosis
Published on: September 7, 2022
Sex ratio of infectious mononucleosis and possible relevance to multiple sclerosis
Sreeram V Ramagopalan1, Gavin Giovannoni, David G Yeates
1Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Abstract:
Infectious mononucleosis (IM) is associated with the risk of developing multiple sclerosis (MS). Using databases of hospital admissions for England (1999-2005), we investigated the female-to-male ratios (FMRs) for admission to hospital for IM and MS stratified by age. Males were more frequently admitted for IM for all age groups apart from ages 10-14 (FMR 1.50; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.36-1.64) and, borderline significantly, at ages 15-19 (FMR 1.03, 95% CI 0.99-1.08). This intriguing aspect of IM epidemiology in adolescence, the atypical female excess, may be linked to the sex ratio of MS, where females predominate from adolescence.
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