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Emory finds XMRV in prostate cancer

ixchelkali

Senior Member
Messages
1,107
Location
Long Beach, CA
An antibody test for XMRV would be nice, since viremia seems to drop to near nothing soon after the initial infection (at least in the macaque study). I can't help but think the low viral load may be one factor that's plaguing the blood test/PCR studies. Maybe an antibody test would get around that problem.
 

Jemal

Senior Member
Messages
1,031
In all, seven labs at Emory are studying XMRV.

I like this. I like this a lot!

A test to identify XMRV had to be extremely sensitive since the retrovirus is very hard to detect. “The thinking is that it’s probably sexually transmitted, and people probably get it in their 20s or 30s,” says Petros. “But they don’t develop prostate cancer until their 50s, 60s, or 70s. So by the time you are looking at a man with prostate cancer, the virus is present in very low numbers, making it very hard to find.”

Bombshell!

Anyway, most of the research talked about is now older. I am curious, what is their stance towards the contamination issues?
 

August59

Daughters High School Graduation
Messages
1,617
Location
Upstate SC, USA
I think something in PWC's is allowing XMRV to start replicating again once it has entered our body and spread to the various reservoirs. A genectic fault or a co-infection probably to do with APOBEC3?

We need to call Emory though and tell them throw all their prostate samples away because they are contaminated and spewing xmrv!! Apparently their samples were not spewing XMRV or they would not have had to look so hard to find it?!? (Using the word "spewing" sarcastically and not picking on Cort or the use of it from his article on contamination)
 

toddm1960

Senior Member
Messages
155
Location
Rochester, New York
I really think the only way positive studies are going to be released is via the internet, negitive studies are published in days. Easy to see how the 1991 virus was buried.
 

Gemini

Senior Member
Messages
1,176
Location
East Coast USA

cigana,

Thanks for posting!

Excellent summary of XMRV studies by seven Emory labs!

Researchers are asking the right questions, i.e.:

“My interest now is to understand why some drugs that work against HIV work against XMRV and others don’t,” continues Schinazi. “I’m also interested in discovering the method of transmission. And what happens in the brains of patients who are infected. There is a lot of interesting work yet to be done.”

They have the skills, retroviral experience(HIV), and resources for XMRV research, plus their labs collaborate!

Impressive and encouraging!
 
C

Cloud

Guest
I really think the only way positive studies are going to be released is via the internet, negitive studies are published in days. Easy to see how the 1991 virus was buried.

Some of the folks at WPI have seen enough over the years to know that anything advancing the truth about ME/CFS, will surely be attacked and discredited.....especially anything to do with an infectious cause. Dr Peterson has been ground zero front lines brunt of that storm from the start. WPI knew full well this onslaught of opposition would happen. I would suspect they had devised a covert plan much before October 2009, in preparation for the political storm that was sure to come. Maybe we are seeing some evidence of that plan with the Norway study, and others that cannot be suppressed. Dr Judy did say last month that the "politics will soon go away".
 

Forebearance

Senior Member
Messages
568
Location
Great Plains, US
Wow! What a great article. It makes me so happy that they have developed their own antibody test. It can only help to have more diagnostic tests that work.
 

kurt

Senior Member
Messages
1,186
Location
USA
From that article:

A test to identify XMRV had to be extremely sensitive since the retrovirus is very hard to detect. The thinking is that its probably sexually transmitted, and people probably get it in their 20s or 30s, says Petros.

That pretty much rules out XMRV as causative for CFS in my opinion, as CFS is not likely an STD. At least not in the majority of cases, not in the outbreaks, not in many cases I am familiar with. And that is an equally ridiculous statement for prostate cancer, there is not a significantly higher rate of prostate cancer among more sexually active or non-monogamous people. In fact, I believe research shows the opposite.

Finally, Petros used additional tissue samples from the same subset, extracting their DNA. He performed a PCR (polymerase chain reaction) amplification and was able to detect the viral RNA sequence of XMRV. We ran three separate blinded testsalbeit on a small number of specimensin three separate labs on serum and tissue 
from the same patients, and we got concordant results, 
says Petros.

Small number so not statistically significant, and re-use of the same patient samples to create the 'blinded' tests. So if there was contamination, they just proved that it was consistent (concordant results) several times over in the separate labs.

Indeed, the amount of work that lies ahead was evident at the September NIH conference. One of the most surprising things at the conference was that not only is there disagreement about whether XMRV is associated with prostate cancer or CFS, but both sides are getting better and better data supporting their positions, says Petros. That tells me we still have a long way to go.

In my view, this is the big picture. When evidence is mounting to support both sides of a scientific argument, there is a long way to go still.
 

SilverbladeTE

Senior Member
Messages
3,043
Location
Somewhere near Glasgow, Scotland
Kurt
it's a retrovirus AND we don't know it's full nature, nto even close
what if it was initially spread sexually/blood or even insaliva...but then since it's a retrovirus...it passes to offspring, and after a certian time the virus is no longer capable of being spread sexually (or very little chance) because it has "buried" itself inside tissue and not fluids etc?

there DOES seem to be cases of transmission or ME by close contact, this has ot be explained somehow.

Remember unlike most STDs or quickly lethal/obvious pathogens, you are going ot have one hell of a time sorting out the epidemiology of a disease that can affect people in many different ways with a long incubation period and pehraps no obvious link to originator and no actual test for the pathogen!
 

cigana

Senior Member
Messages
1,095
Location
UK
That pretty much rules out XMRV as causative for CFS in my opinion, as CFS is not likely an STD. At least not in the majority of cases, not in the outbreaks, not in many cases I am familiar with.

Not in the outbreaks, but I don't see why XMRV can't be transmitted sexually in other cases.

And that is an equally ridiculous statement for prostate cancer, there is not a significantly higher rate of prostate cancer among more sexually active or non-monogamous people. In fact, I believe research shows the opposite.
According to Dr Eric Klein epidemiological data shows there is a higher rate among people with more sexual partners and an increased risk with early sexual activity.
re-use of the same patient samples to create the 'blinded' tests. So if there was contamination, they just proved that it was consistent (concordant results) several times over in the separate labs.
Good point, but wasn't one of the tests for antibodies?
 

Jemal

Senior Member
Messages
1,031
XMRV might need a trigger, before your body develops something like CFS. So in the cases of the outbreaks, all these people might already have had XMRV and they only got CFS once some kind of trigger was pulled. Maybe another virus going around at that time, like the flu. Or exposure to a certain mold.

We know from other retroviruses that they can also spread by saliva (AND it could still be an STD as well).

I still think CFS is more like an autoimmune disorder: somewhere along the line you get infected with XMRV. Then something happens that makes the immune system recognize your body has been infected with XMRV and starts attacking it. This develops into something like CFS. We share many of our symptoms with autoimmune disorders, like the fatigue and muscle aches. Depending on where XMRV is located in your body, the immune response could trigger all kinds of symptoms.
XMRV itself might be innocent, so it might not cause problems on its own. It's likely though it does cause problems, like cancer. I still like this article a lot:

http://niceguidelines.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-take-on-cfs-xmrv-as-of-today.html

It is likely that those with XMRV and no CFS are more likely to die of cancer than those with CFS and XMRV.

and

The implication is that CFS is an emergency antiviral state that assists long term survival. The cost is long term decreased capacity. This state never resolves because the body can't kill a retrovirus.

(All theory of course).
 

cigana

Senior Member
Messages
1,095
Location
UK
XMRV might need a trigger, before your body develops something like CFS. So in the cases of the outbreaks, all these people might already have had XMRV and they only got CFS once some kind of trigger was pulled. Maybe another virus going around at that time...
I think that's almost certainly the case.
 

SilverbladeTE

Senior Member
Messages
3,043
Location
Somewhere near Glasgow, Scotland
In effect a "binary illness", requiring two or more agents to work off each tother, triggering a persistant illness state either by their own actions and/or triggering auto-immune perpetuation.
this has been talked about for a long time as a possibility with ME/CFS, but how this actually comes about is perhaps becoming something we can soon grasp .

Alas, we still have too many morons in the medical arena (and others) who see the world in most basic, infantile reductionist simplicty:
ie 1 disease = can only have 1 cause, and one causative agent can have only 1 effect in their view.
which flies in the face of reality (which is full of complex interactions, even symbiosis, and synergies).