An unusually well-written article for a newspaper.
This forum has had probably hundreds of posts which mention Epstein-Barr virus (often contracted to EBV). Although the article doesn't mention thyroid, I do think it is relevant here.
Can we vaccinate against Epstein-Barr, the virus you didn’t know you had?
theguardian.com/science/202...
The article links to this recent paper:
Longitudinal analysis reveals high prevalence of Epstein-Barr virus associated with multiple sclerosis