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Article: Dr. Mikovits and Annette Whittemore Talk! The Santa Rosa Lecture: Part I by Lannie

Really interesting that she again mentioned the sample freezing....wouldn't it be something if something so simple was it. This should really be easy to test....freeze a sample, test a sample, refreeze it and then test it again.....As I remember freezing does break up viruses to some extent - just not enough to usually make a difference......is XMRV so rare that it does in this case? This should be a piece of cake for the BWG to figure out.

(Yet they used to have to retest samples several samples, at least for the PCR, to get a positive.......weren't they refrozen at some point?)

Interesting that the M/F ratio in XMRV infection was equal but more women have the disorder...maybe it has something to do with hormonal interactions?

I think this is the first time we've heard facts on the two XMRV strains; 30% have both...Is she saying that her phylogenetic analyses indicate the MLV's are part of the XMRV 'family'?
 
One thing I wonder about this beeing frozen stuff. Wasn't there a study checken for it in old blood samples? About 15 years old, and later checked fresh samples from the patients?
If freezing the blood is such a problem how could tehy find it?
I think at some point (sadly I dont remembver where thath was, some december meeting FDA stuff I think) they talked about freezing multiple times beeing a problem not once. So what is it now? frozen once dmg but sometimes still positiv? The more you refreeze it the more dmg done, the less the chance to find something?
 
Me thinks the reason that CFS is considered a womens problem is because men are proud and just don't want to go to the doctor in general, any more than they want to pick out curtains. I have had CFS for 10+ years (found out 2 years ago) but even now, when symptoms aren't extremely terrible, I start thinking I can just trudge along.

Also, could testosterone be an issue? I guess that's the hormonal interaction Cort is talking about.

Thank you Lannie.
 
Cort,
She said that what she is looking at with two gammaretroviruses is actually 2 MRVs (murine retroviruses), not MLVs. So we are looking at XMRV and a new distinct gammaretrovirus that is found using a set of expanded PCR primers. She said that the primers used in the Science Article study employed only 30 base pairs. Now they are up to 700 base pairs and rising.


snipped)I think this is the first time we've heard facts on the two XMRV strains; 30% have both...Is she saying that her phylogenetic analyses indicate the MLV's are part of the XMRV 'family'?
 
Levi - thanks for fielding that question. I'm trying to stay up as best I can, but I'm still scraping by on the extra super duper scientific specifics. Call me out when I'm wrong and I'll edit the article. I just might need you to tell me exactly what wording is wrong/misleading and how to fix it! Thanks a mil! :)
 
Me thinks the reason that CFS is considered a womens problem is because men are proud and just don't want to go to the doctor in general, any more than they want to pick out curtains. I have had CFS for 10+ years (found out 2 years ago) but even now, when symptoms aren't extremely terrible, I start thinking I can just trudge along.

Also, could testosterone be an issue? I guess that's the hormonal interaction Cort is talking about.

Thank you Lannie.

XMRV is able to be turned on by some hormones. On the other hand your explanation is a viable one. I saw that men with FM are more likely to be diagnosed as having arthritis or some other disorder because doctors (at least male ones) are more willing to give their complaints a 'real' diagnosis.
 
Cort,
She said that what she is looking at with two gammaretroviruses is actually 2 MRVs (murine retroviruses), not MLVs. So we are looking at XMRV and a new distinct gammaretrovirus that is found using a set of expanded PCR primers. She said that the primers used in the Science Article study employed only 30 base pairs. Now they are up to 700 base pairs and rising.

Two distinct viruses......wow....and up to 700 bp's - very interesting Love to hear how the work progresses...that's very encouraging.
 
Hi, I just wanted to add something I said on chat last night - two viruses mean that some who test XMRV- might have the other virus, and treatments that don't work well may be because they are too specific to XMRV. I am also concerned about people with both viruses, it might make recovery harder. Of course, this presumes the second virus is pathogenic or can trigger autoimmune problems - issues that still plague XMRV. Bye, Alex
 
Very interesting article.

I especially found the work on families with Autism intriguing.

I wonder if the 30% figure (for patients infected with 2 strains of HMRV) was for another strain of XMRV (i.e. XMRV 2), or for a PMRV, or either? Does anyone have any insights into that?

And can anyone tell me what "XMRV(P)" means?

Can anyone confirm, does that phylogenetic tree diagram suggest that the WPI has discovered about 9 strains of XMRV? (i.e. are there different strains which are named "WPI-1-332" etc? I can't quite read the figures) Or are they mainly referring to Lo and Alter's strains of PMRV's?
Here's a bigger pic of the diagram...
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_zaI4UJCrCNY/TTXNcPnLiEI/AAAAAAAAAHU/jkieQBn4HXw/s1600/IMG_3960.JPG

I think that this article highlights the irrelevance of the Hue et al. paper, with regards to talk of a lack of genetic variability of XMRV... There's so much discussion about different strains and genetic diversity in this article, that it makes the Hue et al. paper meaningless. And it's such early days with XMRV that we surely don't yet have much insight into the totality of the genetic variability of XMRV.

This article specifically mentions a high level of sequence diversity in XMRV...

Reasons for disparity in published results include a high level of sequence diversity in XMRV. A simple PCR would not recognized all the strains.