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Science Mag: Fresh Doubts About Connection Between Mouse Virus and Human Disease

Jemal

Senior Member
Messages
1,031
Article about XMRV in Science

I noticed a new article about XMRV popped up on the Science website:

More Negative Data for Link Between Mouse Virus and Human Disease
Jon Cohen

A new finding presented at a conference last week throws cold water on the impassioned debate about the link between a novel mouse retrovirus and prostate cancer and chronic fatigue syndrome in humans. Yet few believe it will end the controversy, which began in 2006. In an extensive sleuthing expedition that looked back nearly 20 years, two collaborating research teams contend that they have evidence that xenotropic murine leukemia virus–related virus (XMRV) resulted from the chance recombination of pieces of two mouse viruses in lab experiments and that the connections to human disease are spurious. But even if XMRV is not a threat to human health, the fact that a retrovirus that can readily infect human cells was apparently generated by chance in the lab raises some interesting and potentially troubling issues.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6022/1253.citation

Don't have access to the entire article...
 

Cort

Phoenix Rising Founder
Well, we definitely know where Coffin stands now.

Fresh Doubts About Connection Between Mouse Virus and Human Disease
by Jon Cohen on 8 March 2011, 6:36 PM | Permanent Link | 0 Comments

BOSTONA new finding presented at a conference here last week throws cold water on the impassioned debate about the link between a novel mouse retrovirus and prostate cancer and chronic fatigue syndrome in humans. Yet few believe it will end the controversy, which began in 2006.

In an extensive sleuthing expedition that looked back nearly 20 years, two collaborating research teams contend they have evidence that xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) resulted from the chance recombination of pieces of two mouse viruses in lab experiments and that the connections to human disease are spurious. "That nails it," said retrovirologist Nathaniel Landau of New York University. "Everyone working on this thing has this virus contaminating their stuff. It's been a tremendous waste of time and money."

Vinay Pathak, a retrovirologist who works at the HIV Drug Resistance Program run by the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Frederick, Maryland, presented the new data at the 18th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections. Pathak explained how he became intrigued by a 2009 study that showed how a human prostate cancer cell line was infected with XMRV. He acquired earlier material made to use the cell linein particular, tumors grown in mice, called xenografts, that were then "passaged" to other miceand established that the original human tumor could not have harbored XMRV.

More startling still, Pathak's lab found that some of the early samples of xenografts did have a stretch of DNA that was nearly identical to about half of the XMRV genome. A group led by John Coffin, who works at both NCI and Tufts University here, made a similar discovery with different samples of xenografts. When the teams compared notes, they saw that the two sequences perfectly overlapped to form XMRV. "It was an amazing moment, the kind that happens once or twice in a career," says Coffin. "It was like seeing a puzzle come together." As Pathak emphasized in his talk, the DNA sequences in what they dubbed preXMRV-1 and preXMRV-2 are nearly identical to the XMRV sequences reportedly found in humans but suspected to be a lab contaminant by some groups. Retroviruses frequently recombine with each other, which is how the two preXMRV sequences likely became XMRV. Now Coffin is convinced that "it is all contamination."
 

SOC

Senior Member
Messages
7,849
Isn't this journalist at all concerned that these labs inadvertently created an infectious human retrovirus? And didn't figure it out for 15 years? Seems to me there ought to be major journalist fodder there.
 

jace

Off the fence
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Location
England
Here's Gerwyn's analysis:



Reply to Cohen et al - http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6022/1253.short

The research in CROI established that at least some strains of XMRV could have hypothetically originated by recombination of two endogenous retroviruses found in one particular strain of nude mouse. However, it has not been established that this strain of mouse was actually used in creating the cell line in question. The results published by Garson et al (published in Retrovirology) (1) also need to be considered.

They demonstrated that a strain of XMRV could have entered the human population during the creation of the DU145 cell line in 1978. This research did not involve mice, and does not make any comment about the pathogenicity of the gamma retroviruses which are now replicating in the human population, it merely comment about their origin. The*act of two erv sequences recombining to form a replicative entity has thus far never been demonstrated (2).
*
Scientists use their own terminology which is often misunderstood by the lay public. Lawyers and doctors do likewise. Words used by such people do not have the same meaning as the words would have in an everyday normal context. It would be a tragedy if the hard won reputation of someone like John Coffin was tarnished by the quite accidental misunderstanding of the meaning of his words.

The word "contamination" in the context used by Dr Coffin means "recombination", and he is referring to the process of how the recombination of two harmless "fossilised" viral segments in mouse DNA can spontaneously recombine to form virulent pathogenic viruses. Sadly this recombination often leads to a situation where the virus can infect new hosts.

Dr Coffin is in no way saying that human gamma retroviruses are not now endemic in the human population, nor is he saying that these viruses are not the cause of ME/CFS or prostate cancer. I am sure that Dr Coffin will clarify his position once he realises the manner in which his comments (again quite innocently) have been misinterpreted. I did feel however that it was appropriate to write in his defence at this early stage.

*Detecting XMRV in prostate tissue* by PCR is difficult (3). Dr Pathak had not used a tried and tested PCR assay and thus had no way of knowing whether XMRV actually existed in prostate tissue before xenograft formation. The fact that is assay could not find it is not the same thing as proving that it was not present. This has to be proven or the study falls

It falls because testosterone pellets are used in the formation of xenografts (4). Testosterone both activates and increases the replication rate of XMRV via its effects on the CRE region within the long terminal repeat sequences (5). Thus the results can be readily explained by the fact that the use of testosterone rapidly raised the titre of XMRV to a level comparable to the concentration that most PCR assays can detect.

It is a shame that Dr Pathak did not see the flaw in his research. He has not established that the mouse*strain in question had been used in the creation of this cell line.

it should also be stated that the partial xenotropic sequence reported by Dr Coffin was in a different strain of mouse (129X1/SvJ), known not to play any part in the creation of the 22rv1 cell line (Robinson et al). Whatever the origin of XMRV one thing is very clear, it was first isolated from the RNA of prostate cancer sufferers (5). The only way that genomic viral RNA can be formed from the proviral DNA suggested by Coffin and Pathak is by replication.

Thus we now know that there is at least one species of replicating oncovirus in the human population. This class of virus causes severe pathology and death in other species and there is no reason that they will not do so in humans. Thus when Dr Coffin quite innocently uses the word contamination it must be clarified that he means recombination and that recombination can increase a MLV virus's host range and increase its pathogenicity.

Given the potential gravity of the situation researchers such as Dr Pathak should discuss alternative explanations of their findings with as much vigour as those that support their preconceived beliefs.

1) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.2910210305/abstract

2) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10542419

3) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20936978

4) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8433392

5) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16609730

6) http://www.retrovirology.com/content/7/1/108
 

Cort

Phoenix Rising Founder
They demonstrated that a strain of XMRV could have entered the human population during the creation of the DU145 cell line in 1978. This research did not involve mice, and does not make any comment about the pathogenicity of the gamma retroviruses which are now replicating in the human population, it merely comment about their origin. The*act of two erv sequences recombining to form a replicative entity has thus far never been demonstrated (2).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18684813

The DU145 cell line may have been created in 1978 but I don't think they're saying XMRV was present in it. My reading of the paper infected the cell line first and then looked to see where XMRV integrated itself.

To determine the integration site preferences of XMRV and the potential risk of proviral insertional mutagenesis, we carried out a genome-wide analysis of viral integration sites in the prostate cell line DU145 after an acute XMRV infection and compared the integration site pattern of XMRV with those found for murine leukemia virus and two human retroviruses, human immunodeficiency virus type 1 and human T-cell leukemia virus type 1.

Is that Gerwyn or Jane Clout or are they the same or did Jane take Gerwyn's stuff?
 

Cort

Phoenix Rising Founder
I think this is an interesting point.

*Detecting XMRV in prostate tissue* by PCR is difficult (3). Dr Pathak had not used a tried and tested PCR assay and thus had no way of knowing whether XMRV actually existed in prostate tissue before xenograft formation. The fact that is assay could not find it is not the same thing as proving that it was not present. This has to be proven or the study falls

It falls because testosterone pellets are used in the formation of xenografts (4). Testosterone both activates and increases the replication rate of XMRV via its effects on the CRE region within the long terminal repeat sequences (5). Thus the results can be readily explained by the fact that the use of testosterone rapidly raised the titre of XMRV to a level comparable to the concentration that most PCR assays can detect.

Pathak should have used a PCR technique that was as effective as other techniques as finding XMRV. Was it? I have no idea. Clearly researchers should start ploughing through their stocks of that cell line.

The problem is that if they conclude that XMRV is a contaminant they will assume that's how it got in there. On the other hand they can compare the genetic sequences; if XMRV is not a contaminant it should show distinct variability over time. If it is a contaminant it will probably look much the same.

Then again it is a real virus! So if they find it it should change over time.....that is, if it is growing ini the D cells....its tricky stuff. Still I think they should be able to do a 'parental analysis' aka Hue and determine the logical parent....If its 22RV1 - then it probably came from there and got into other cultures. If its not then it has a different origin.
 

kurt

Senior Member
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Location
USA
If anyone here is concerned that Coffin's words are somehow being misconstrued, please observe that John Coffin was the CHAIR of the Scientific Program Committee at the 2011 CROI conference. This entire conference program was reviewed, managed and no doubt approved by Dr Coffin. He has reportedly stated directly that he believes XMRV findings are all contamination. That is not something subject to interpretation.

Here is a direct quote from that new Cohen article in Science.

Coffin believed earlier that studies linking XMRV to human disease deserved serious attention. He co-authored an article in the 23 October 2009 issue of Science, which included the first report of XMRV in patients who had chronic fatigue syndrome. Led by Vincent Lombardi of the Whittemore Peterson Institute in Reno, Nevada, and NCI's Francis Ruscetti, the study provided more evidence that, as Coffin's piece stated, transmission happened in the outside world and was not a laboratory contaminant. Now, Coffin has changed his thinking. It's all contamination, he says. At this point, Coffin questions whether any human has been infected with the virus. It remains a distant possibility, he says.

The source of that Coffin quote was not mentioned in the article. But this does not sound like someone who is expecting XMRV to work out for CFS.
 

ukxmrv

Senior Member
Messages
4,413
Location
London
Can it not be both though?

A recombinant virus from a cancer cell line that is both a "contamination" there but has moved onto the human population and is now in people with CFS, prostate cancer etc. Being a "contaminate" in a call line doesn't preclude it from being anything else as well, does it?

I have not seen anything presented that negates the findings originally published in Science.
 
Messages
118
Well Coffin is not the only scientist involved and obviously others were shut out of the conference from presenting their findings. Just because John Coffin says doesn't make it so. It only makes you wonder what Coffin is trying to hide.
 

Sean

Senior Member
Messages
7,378
It only makes you wonder what Coffin is trying to hide.

It only makes me wonder about how genuinely interested some patients are in the truth about XMRV.

Ill considered, knee jerk, gutter level, conspiracy theory smears do not help us IN ANY WAY. Coffin may genuinely believe it is contamination. Honourable and competent people can disagree.

You want to scare off legit researchers, who might be able to help us? If so, then you are going about it the right way.

Some in the patient community have invested waaaaaaaaay too much emotional commitment to XMRV, independent of the facts. Which is exactly what we patients accuse the CBT/GET fans of doing (and rightly so).

As best I can tell, the facts about XMRV are that it has not yet been clearly demonstrated (in independent multiple studies) to consistently turn up in ME/CFS patients, and it certainly has not yet been demonstrated to be THE primary cause of our health problems. Neither has contamination been firmly ruled out. We simply don't know at this point.

XMRV may not be the answer for us, and we better be ready for that possibility.
 
Messages
118
I've tested positive for XMRV and have been ill for 16 years. It has nothing to do with conspiracy but might have everything to do with carelessness in the laboratory (possibly years ago). mouse retroviruses caused neuroimmune disease and cancers originally in mice, and it's highly possible that once crossed into humans they could do the same. I have 3 people in my immediate family with neuroimmune diseases and 2 with cancer. No other history of these illnesses in grandparents or distant relatives. Just read the data that being presented on previous science papers on how mouse viruses have been used and you will be surpised. And there are plenty of legit researchers continuing to work on XMRV. What we say has no impact. The facts will present the truth. And the truth will be published.

If Coffin believed the contamination theory then why did he say it came from a cell line that was not even used in Silverman/Klein or The Science paper? Having a mouse retrovirus end up in people has no more conspiracy to it just as having the other 500 chemicals showing up in our breast milk and Cord blood. Many of which have been FDA approved for uses in all kinds of products we use.

Oh and by the way I haven't invested waaaaaaaaay too much emotional commitment to XMRV. I have the paper that says I carry the retrovirus. That's all I need to know. I also know that baby forumla cans are lined with a hormone disrupter that is in most plastics we use. Wonder what the consequenses of that will be in say 20 years. Oh but that was just recently found out. Do you know what you've been drinking in your favorite plastic container? Just look it up.
 

Cort

Phoenix Rising Founder
More Fun from Science. Here is the complete article in Science it is a doozy. The recent events have changed Coffin's view completely.

Here's how these researchers believed XMRV was created. It's an amazing theory. This scenario will undoubtedly be assessed and examined and pondered in retrovirology community for a long time.

Busch still awaits the results of the BWG tests and others.....but given the evidence presented here he believes if they don't work out - its over.

As Pathak emphasized in his talk, the DNA sequences in what they dubbed preXMRV-1 and preXMRV-2 are nearly identical to the XMRV sequences reportedly found in humans but suspected to be a lab contaminant by some groups. Pathak's and Coffin's teams both also found preXMRVs in some mice strains used in the experiments.But XMRV itself cannot infect mouse cells, which means the preXMRVs could have recombined only after the mice received prostate tumor transplants that contained human cells. Specifically, RNA from both preXMRV genomes must have been packaged in a newly formed viral particle, or virion. When that virion infected a human cell derived from the prostate tumor, the reverse transcriptase enzyme accidentally mashed up the preXMRVs and created XMRV. It's a very elegant study, says phylogeneticist Stphane Hu of University College London. This is the birth date of the virus.
Science
March 10, 2011
More Negative Data for Link Between Mouse Virus and Human Disease
By Jon Cohen


BOSTONA new finding presented at a conference here last week throws cold water on the impassioned debate about the link between a novel mouse retrovirus and prostate cancer and chronic fatigue syndrome in humans. Yet few believe it will end the controversy, which began in 2006.

In an extensive sleuthing expedition that looked back nearly 20 years, two collaborating research teams contend that they have evidence that xenotropic murine leukemia virusrelated virus (XMRV) resulted from the chance recombination of pieces of two mouse viruses in lab experiments and that the connections to human disease are spurious. That nails it, said retrovirologist Nathaniel Landau of New York University. Everyone working on this thing has this virus contaminating their stuff. It's been a tremendous waste of time and money. But even if XMRV is not a threat to human health, the fact that a retrovirus that can readily infect human cells was apparently generated by chance in the lab raises some interesting and potentially troubling issues.

Vinay Pathak, a retrovirologist who works at the HIV Drug Resistance Program run by the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Frederick, Maryland, presented the new data at the 18th Conference on Retro viruses and Opportunistic Infections, which focuses mainly on another retrovirus, HIV. (For additional coverage of the meeting, see pages 1248 and 1249.) The fact that the XMRV work garnered so much attention here reflects the high stakes. The possibility that XMRV causes human disease has raised both hope and fear among patients and public health officials (Science, 2 July 2010, p. 18). For people who have prostate cancer or the baffling chronic fatigue syndrome, XMRV offered not only an explanation but also a treatment: The virus is susceptible to some anti-HIV drugs. Blood banks, on the other hand, have worried mightily that, as happened when the AIDS epidemic began, they were unwittingly helping to spread a dangerous retrovirus.

The unusual life cycle of retroviruses explains how such a recombination could occur, as Pathak described. Retroviruses contain RNA that, in addition to coding for viral proteins, carries instructions to make the enzyme reverse transcriptase. After a retro virus infects a cell, reverse transcriptase converts the viral RNA into DNA, which is necessary for the virus to integrate with the host chromosomes. This is the stage in which recombination between retroviral DNA from different genomes can happen.

Pathak explained how skepticism has steadily built about the link between XMRV and these diseases as several labs examined patient samples and could not find the virus or antibodies to it (Science, 17 September 2010, p. 1454). One 2009 study particularly piqued Pathak's interest, as it showed how a human prostate cancer cell line produced high levels of the virus.

The cell line was established at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, from a human tumor called CWR22. Prostate cancer tumors are difficult to grow in lab experiments, but in 1993, researchers there reported that they had success by injecting tissue from CWR22 into mice, growing tumors, injecting tissue from those xenografts into new mice, and repeating that passaging process until they could reliably grow large enough xenografts for study. In 1999, the same lab described a permanent cell line, 22Rv1, it had made from a CWR22 xenograft. Because it was one of very few cell lines available to study prostate cancer, it was widely used. Pathak's group tracked down samples from different passages of CWR22, different versions of both 22Rv1 and a second cell line made later from CWR22. Before 1996, no CWR22 samples contained XMRV DNA.

Pathak's lab found that some of the early samples of xenografts did have a stretch of DNA that was nearly identical to about half of the XMRV genome. A group led by John Coffin, who works at both NCI and Tufts University here, made a similar discovery with different samples of xenografts. When the teams compared notes, they saw that the two sequences perfectly overlapped to form XMRV. It was an amazing moment, the kind that happens once or twice in a career, Coffin says. It was like seeing a puzzle come together.

As Pathak emphasized in his talk, the DNA sequences in what they dubbed preXMRV-1 and preXMRV-2 are nearly identical to the XMRV sequences reportedly found in humans but suspected to be a lab contaminant by some groups. Pathak's and Coffin's teams both also found preXMRVs in some mice strains used in the experiments. But XMRV itself cannot infect mouse cells, which means the preXMRVs could have recombined only after the mice received prostate tumor transplants that contained human cells. Specifically, RNA from both preXMRV genomes must have been packaged in a newly formed viral particle, or virion. When that virion infected a human cell derived from the prostate tumor, the reverse transcriptase enzyme accidentally mashed up the preXMRVs and created XMRV. It's a very elegant study, says phylogeneticist Stphane Hu of University College London. This is the birth date of the virus.

Hammering the nail in further, Oya Cingz in Coffin's lab looked for XMRV in dozens of inbred and wild mice and reported that she found no evidence that the virus naturally exists.

Coffin believed earlier that studies linking XMRV to human disease deserved serious attention. He co-authored an article in the 23 October 2009 issue of Science, which included the first report of XMRV in patients who had chronic fatigue syndrome. Led by Vincent Lombardi of the Whittemore Peterson Institute in Reno, Nevada, and NCI's Francis Ruscetti, the study provided more evidence that, as Coffin's piece stated, transmission happened in the outside world and was not a laboratory contaminant. Now, Coffin has changed his thinking. It's all contamination, he says. At this point, Coffin questions whether any human has been infected with the virus. It remains a distant possibility, he says.

Hu, who works with Greg Towers in London, presented complementary 22Rv1 data at the conference that they published 20 December 2010 in Retrovirology (Science, 7 January, p. 17). They showed that XMRVs isolated from different 22Rv1 cell lines were more genetically diverse than sequences reportedly found in chronic fatigue and prostate cancer patients. If XMRV infected humans, copied itself, and spread to others, Hu says he would expect to see more diversity in the patients as it evolved to escape immune defenses. I don't think XMRV is a human pathogen, Hu says. It's as simple as that. Like Coffin, he doubts that XMRV has even infected a human but adds that one can never say that something doesn't exist.

The evidence coming out at this meeting is incredibly impressive, and the weight of evidence is indicating that this is not a major human virus in terms of pathogenesis, says Michael Busch, who heads the Blood Systems Research Institute in San Francisco, California, and is part of a working group convened by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to examine whether XMRV poses a threat to the country's blood supply. But Busch said that before he concludes XMRV is simply a contaminant, he wants to see the results of studies they are coordinating between several labs with samples from agreed-upon patient and negative controls, as well as blood donors. If most of these fail to find the virus, Busch says, it's going to eliminate concerns that XMRV has caused these diseases.

Even if XMRV has not harmed humans, Busch says we got lucky. This is the first accidental generation of a retrovirus that can infect human cells. It's a warning shot, Busch says. We've created a highly infectious virus that may transmit to humans.
 

Sean

Senior Member
Messages
7,378
Ernie, if you have any genuine technical issues with researchers/clinicians, fine, go for it. If you have any solid evidence that any of them is behaving unethically, then put your evidence in the public domain. I strongly support your right to do so in both cases.

But don't just smear Coffin because he has a different take on it to you. I have no idea if he is correct. But he is no fool or novice, and he has earned the right to have his opinion on this issue taken seriously and respectfully, even if you do not agree with it.

I don't recall if Coffin said it wasn't pathogenic. It could be that XMRV is both contamination (in that it was unknowingly created in a laboratory and distributed via a number of vectors, including cell lines), and is also significantly pathogenic.

It also remains a serious possibility that XMRV is a dead end for us, and if that turns out to be so then I certainly do not want any more of the very precious and limited ME/CFS research resources spent on it, when they could be better spent on (for example) objective lab based studies on post-exertional malaise or spinal fluid, both very promising lines of research.
 

kurt

Senior Member
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Location
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But don't just smear Coffin because he has a different take on it to you. I have no idea if he is correct. But he is no fool or novice, and he has earned the right to have his opinion on this issue taken seriously and respectfully, even if you do not agree with it.
I don't recall if Coffin said it wasn't pathogenic. It could be that XMRV is both contamination (in that it was unknowingly created in a laboratory and distributed via a number of vectors, including cell lines), and is also significantly pathogenic.

Coffin and other retrovirus researchers also know the track record of previous retroviral hunts. I think they see a familiar pattern emerging in their XMRV findings. There is a good pub that can give some perspective. Read the 'Rumor Viruses' article for some details of the history.

It also remains a serious possibility that XMRV is a dead end for us, and if that turns out to be so then I certainly do not want any more of the very precious and limited ME/CFS research resources spent on it, when they could be better spent on (for example) objective lab based studies on post-exertional malaise or spinal fluid, both very promising lines of research.

This has always been a possibility, I was worried about XMRV as soon as I learned it was a blood-borne retrovirus, which seems inconsistent with CFS epidemiology. In particular, CFS is not an STD, and not a drug user disease, not a hemopheliac disease. And CFS is not ubiquitous so it is not a 'vaccination disease.' Also CFS outbreaks are inconsistent with a bood-borne pathogen. This creates some doubt in my mind. Of course there are many other issues, pro and con, this is just an example. I think we should try to take a balanced view of the science, not presuming prejudice on the part of researchers. If bias is an issue, we should consider that prejudice can exist on either side of this debate.

Definitely CSF/proteonomic and PEM/Fatigue Receptors are promising lines of research, and don't forget the Hydrogen Sulfide findings of deMeirlier.
 

CBS

Senior Member
Messages
1,522
CFS is not an STD

Just wanted to say, love the self confidence in the face of so many unknowns.

The statement of fact that you made about CFS not being an STD will do nicely to illustrate my point.

Sexual transmission may not be the only way to get CFS but to rule it out so confidently, I'm impressed. What do you know that we don't?

There are a lot of subsets of CFS, many of which we may have not yet have even considered and yet your statement does not leave that open as a possibility.

Twenty five years ago , would most people have described cervical cancer as being derived from an STD? Now the prevailing wisdom is this:

"Persistent HPV infections are now recognized as the cause of essentially all cervical cancers."

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/HPV

As Laurie Anderson might say, "I could go on and on but not tonight dear, I have a headache."

[video=youtube;DZkjoXyexKk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZkjoXyexKk[/video]
 

kurt

Senior Member
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USA
Just wanted to say, love the self confidence in the face of so many unknowns.
The statement of fact that you made about CFS not being an STD will do nicely to illustrate my point.
Sexual transmission may not be the only way to get CFS but to rule it out so confidently, I'm impressed. What do you know that we don't?
There are a lot of subsets of CFS, many of which we may have not yet have even considered and yet your statement does not leave that open as a possibility.
Twenty five years ago , would most people have described cervical cancer as being derived from an STD? Now the prevailing wisdom is this:
"Persistent HPV infections are now recognized as the cause of essentially all cervical cancers."
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/HPV

AIDS is an STD, that became apparent early in the epidemic. Yes, there are other ways to contract AIDS, but those ways are all consistent with a blood-borne retrovirus (HIV).

There may be a few cases where some of the infections in a specific CFS case are transmitted sexually. I was not trying to make an exclusive comment and did not say CFS could not be transmitted sexually, but was merely pointing out the obvious. If CFS was primarily caused by a blood-borne retrovirus it would be an STD, we would know that by now. A high percent of spouses and partners would be contracting CFS, and children, teens and adults with no sexual experiences, or who have always been monogamous along with their partners, would not be. And there could not be outbreaks the way we have seen them in CFS.

CFS patient's partners generally do not contract CFS and sexually inexperienced or exclusive people do get CFS just the same as more sexually active people. This is not something I know that others do not, this is just a basic observation.

I do know people who think they acquired CFS from their lifestyles, maybe a few did 'catch' some part of CFS from a sick partner, so they feel CFS could be an STD, but the evidence contradicts that fear, people with CFS come from all walks of life, from all lifestyles.
 

Snow Leopard

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The above is making assumptions about the infectivity of the virus. Virology studies (both in vivo and in vitro) so far show that XMRV/MLVs are not terribly infectious and likely to be as a result of laboratory mistakes. This may make it hard for it to spread as an STD. It is quite possible that the only way to be infected is through contaminated biological products as hypothesised here: http://www.frontiersin.org/virology/10.3389/fmicb.2010.00147/abstract

But for the current prostate cancer/CFS/ME studies to make any sense, there needs to be multiple cases of contamination of products given to the general public.

Actually, for that matter, there must have been multiple laboritory contamination events, to explain the difference between the Lo et al results and the other XMRV/disease studies, as well as the Retrovirology studies which failed to pinpoint the sources of contamination. Gvien that these labs didn't use 22rV1, nor mice cells, there are potentially multiple reagents that may be contaminated. It makes you wonder how easily other viruses could be common contaminants of such products.

Given that evidence of chromosomal integration of XMRV in patients is still unproven, it's role in disease will remain questionable. But even if XMRV has not infected any humans, it is still both worrying and scientifically curious to see how pervasive it is in the laboratory.
 

Sean

Senior Member
Messages
7,378
But even if XMRV has not infected any humans, it is still both worrying and scientifically curious to see how pervasive it is in the laboratory.

Whatever XMRV's causal role in disease turns out to be (or not to be), it will have taught scientists and health authorities some important lessons.