I understand that antibodies can form and attack almost anything foreign, and as with autoimmune disease can attack the body.
But if we speak specifically of XMRV, antibodies wouldn’t form and attack XMRV if it was benign, so wouldn‘t this show that XMRV is causing damage, and therefore disease?
And on this point, if a person is infected with latent XMRV, would they show negative on a serology test? Again proving that the body specifically creates antibodies for XMRV when it is active, and causing disease.
Hi bullybeef,
I'm no expert here, but that's not quite my understanding of how our immune systems work...
I think we do have an immune response to many viruses and bacteria that do not cause disease.
If you think about AIDS, then it gives an example of this...
With AIDS, the body's immune system is severely compromised such that everyday, ubiquitous, viruses, that do not usually cause disease, become a serious risk to life for the AIDS patient.
These usually benign viruses are only benign as long as we have an active immune response to them.
As far as I'm aware, there's a few different types of benign bacteria/virus... One type of benign virus has no chance of infecting us in the first place because it simply hasn't evolved to infect us (i.e. it might be an animal virus) and so it doesn't have the cellular equipment to invade our cells. But this doesn't mean that there's no immune system response to them... Our bodies tend to attack and get rid of any foreign invader in our immune system. A virus that is unable to infect our cells still activates an immune response, so that it is completely destroyed.
It could be that case that XMRV is a normally benign virus, which always has an immune system response in everyone it infects. But maybe it causes disease in a fraction of those who are infected with it because of a susceptibility due to genetic differences or environmental factors such as infection with other pathogens.
Or it could be the case that XMRV is always benign, albeit with an immune response, and that it just happens to infect people with ME more than the normal population. (This might be due to a compromised immune system or genetic factors.)
So there are many possibilities, but my understanding is that an immune response does not indicate disease or illness, but it can be purely a healthy immune response.
It might also be the case that a person is no longer infected with any virus whatsoever, but that they still have anti-bodies to the virus which show that they were once infected with the virus. (This would be due a totally successful immune response that eliminated the virus.)
So my understanding is that an antibody doesn't prove that there is a disease process, or that there is presently infection... It only proves that there was once an infection with that virus.
My personal belief is that XMRV causes damage... And there do seem to be parallels with ME, AIDS and HTLV infection...
Like I said, I'm no expert, but that's my understanding of how it works.