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Xmrv not very pleasant news

Rosemary

Senior Member
Messages
193
HIV infection has been difficult to cure because of uncharacterized reservoirs of infected cells that are resistant to antiretroviral therapy.
This study shows that some hematopoietic stem cells are latently infected and may therefore constitute such a reservoir.

HIV-1 infects multipotent progenitor cells causing cell death and establishing latent cellular reservoirs

http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v16/n4/abs/nm.2109.html?lang=en#/
 

Cort

Phoenix Rising Founder
It sure is a sticky area and I sure hope that lymphoma or other cancers are not associated with most people in this disease. Dr. Peterson found a huge increase in lymphoma in the Incline Village patients but I wonder why that hasn't been duplicated elsewhere - surely one of our other physicians would have noticed these unusual lymphomas cropping up. I hope that it is something more specific to those patients he was studying.
 
G

Gerwyn

Guest
It sure is a sticky area and I sure hope that lymphoma or other cancers are not associated with most people in this disease. Dr. Peterson found a huge increase in lymphoma in the Incline Village patients but I wonder why that hasn't been duplicated elsewhere - surely one of our other physicians would have noticed these unusual lymphomas cropping up. I hope that it is something more specific to those patients he was studying.

XMRV is an onco virus.All Mulvs are pathogenic. A higher rate of various cancers should appear in family members along with a higher level of cytokine induced illnesses.There are a vast range of potential health issues ranging from the minor to more serious conditions
 
Messages
24
Location
ENGLAND UK
I had leukemia 19 years ago when i was 7 months pregnant. and Never fully recovered. But always thought it was the treatment. i had a brief break from lots of symtoms after 6 years recovering, or so i thought. then a shingles virus and hormone change. and have been in a ME/CFS flare for nearly 6 years. i have often wondered if they are related.
 

redo

Senior Member
Messages
874
Dr. Peterson's clinic was seeing an increase in lymphoma that was attributed to the CFS outbreak there.... Found more info...see below:

Of all the problems associated with ME/CFS one would have hoped that the Big C wouldnt be one of them. But the evidence presented at the conference suggests that at least with this particular cohort of patient its a very real problem.

Dr. Peterson got Dr. Mikovits, a cancer researcher, interested when he mentioned at a conference in Spain that he had nine patients with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma (NHL). NHL strikes about 2 out of every 10,000 people in the US (0.02%) but a full 5% of Dr. Petersons Nevada cohort had developed it. Even more striking was the type of specific of type of lymphoma he was finding.

Mantle Cell Lymphoma is a form of non-Hodgkins Lymphoma (NHL) that is almost vanishingly rare. If my back of the envelope statistics are correct MCL strikes about 1 out of every 100,000 people but thirty percent of Dr. Petersons ME/CFS cancer patients had it. Thats the kind of finding that will turn a cancer researchers head and it got Dr. Mikovits, a viral cancer researcher associated with the HHV-6 Foundations attention. She told me she knew right away that thats a virus.

The medication for NHL also works very well for CFS for months at a time.
Dr.P. found that Non-Hodkins Lymphoma (NHL) was appearant in unexpecedly large numbers with his CFS patients.
When he told dr. Mikovits about this, she said "that's a virus", and that's even before she made the XMRV discovery.

It might very well be that XMRV can cause this in some of the CFS sufferers.

But if they both are caused (or co-caused) by XMRV, it would not be unexpected that the medicine which works for NHL could also work for CFS sufferers.

So what happens when they give NHL medication to people who don't have NHL, but have CFS?
They get a whole lot better for months.

I think that treatment study deserves a lot more attention. It's a small study, three people, but nevertheless, it works. MS patients have for long had the possibility to take a somewhat similar drug (the monoclonal antibody Natalizumab) and get a lot better... If I had the opportunity I would do it. No doubt.

I am not saying that Mikovits is saying that NHL comes from XMRV. But I think it's plausible that they are connected. Retroviruses can cause things like that.
 

coxy

Senior Member
Messages
174
It sure is a sticky area and I sure hope that lymphoma or other cancers are not associated with most people in this disease. Dr. Peterson found a huge increase in lymphoma in the Incline Village patients but I wonder why that hasn't been duplicated elsewhere - surely one of our other physicians would have noticed these unusual lymphomas cropping up. I hope that it is something more specific to those patients he was studying.

Other physicians may well of noticed it if their patients stayed around long enough to be followed up years later. How many of us stop seeing our consultants when they can't help us any further?
 

biophile

Places I'd rather be.
Messages
8,977
I can think of 2 important complications arising from XMRV being confirmed as significant for ME/CFS.

First, many of us are intolerant or sensitive to medications in general. Current antiretrovirals may be unacceptable for many patients. If XMRV turns out to be important in the perpetuation of symptoms as opposed to a passenger virus or something that caused damage long ago, our intolerance or sensitivity may pose a direct obstacle to treatment and therefore will be taken more seriously and given the research attention that it deserves.

Second, if we are XMRV+ according to future standardized tests, do we wait for research to confirm the presence of XMRV in sexual fluid before informing previous sexual partners they may be infected?
 

Levi

Senior Member
Messages
188
The jury is still out for an XMRV/CFS connection in the scientific community.

But if an XMRV/CFS connection is validated, and also an XMRV/cancer connection is established from future research, then where do you think that will ultimately lead in terms of public health issues and perceptions?

XMRV is an onco virus.All Mulvs are pathogenic. A higher rate of various cancers should appear in family members along with a higher level of cytokine induced illnesses.There are a vast range of potential health issues ranging from the minor to more serious conditions
 

Daffodil

Senior Member
Messages
5,875
bluebonnet....if you have cancer somewhere in your body already, and you get stem cell treatments, it would ecourage the further growth of the cancer.

sue
 

acer2000

Senior Member
Messages
818
Second, if we are XMRV+ according to future standardized tests, do we wait for research to confirm the presence of XMRV in sexual fluid before informing previous sexual partners they may be infected?

This is a good question. A more fundamental question is - do we wait for a study confirming the testing methodology for the presence of XMRV, and also its association with disease? Right now there is but one study associating XMRV with CFS patients, and one lab that claims to be able to find it. We are all hoping this works out and for various reasons the other studies could have been inaccurate, but as it stands now nobody has confirmed any of this and published.
 

*GG*

senior member
Messages
6,389
Location
Concord, NH
Other physicians may well of noticed it if their patients stayed around long enough to be followed up years later. How many of us stop seeing our consultants when they can't help us any further?

Count me in! I already fired 1 so called specialist, added another 2 years ago and then 2 more last fall with a Major Flare up! I only see 1 regularly though.

I have only had this disease 7 years though.
 

minimus

Senior Member
Messages
140
Location
New York, NY
Anyone who has followed research about CFS or who has been sick long enough should be well aware that the immune system abnormalities found in CFS should raise the risk of cancer.

Every year I go for my annual visit to Paul Cheney. One of the forms his office hands out every year is a list of medical tests that he wants his patients to have done on a fairly frequent basis (i.e. blood work every year, chest X-ray every two years, upper endoscopy every two years, colonoscopy every two years, pelvic ultrasound every two years). It doesn't take a genius to read between the lines about his rationale for recommending these tests with such frequency.

I suspect he has seen cancer develop at an elevated frequency in his practice.

He also used to talk quite a lot about all the immune system abnormalities known to occur in CFS, including the pronounced shift from TH1 to TH2 immunity, low NK-cell function, high oxidative stress, and inadequate P450 conjugation, that, regardless of underlying cause, theoretically raise the risk of cancer.

He once joked to me that private insurance companies will both deny disability claims and life insurance coverage to anyone with a diagnosis of CFS. His point was that these insurers are being self-contradictory in their actions. But my takeaway is that I am more likely to die at an early age than a healthy person.

Similarly, Leonard Jason wrote a paper a few years ago which noted people with CFS who die from cancer tend to be a lot younger than for the general population. Specifically, average age of death from cancer among CFS patients was only 48, compared to 72 for the entire US population. Although this doesn't prove that CFS causes cancer (since it doesn't measure incidence rates), it is cautionary.

A cancer diagnosis would scare the hell out of me. My life may be fairly miserable, but it still seems better than the alternative. That said, I feel somewhat resigned to the fact that at some point my illness will progress to a life-threatening illness.