Cluster outbreaks

[Wally]

If you find the cyanobacteria hypothesis of interest then I would suggest reviewing this article - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3295368/

 

[anciendaze]

Did you notice that the indigenous group which ate the cycad seeds also ate bats!?

They also ate feral pigs and fruit bats that fed on cycad seeds—the bats, known as Mariana flying foxes, were stewed in coconut cream and eaten whole—brains, bones, skin, and all.

Bats are one major source of gamma retroviruses.

I have no trouble believing that ME/CFS patients are more sensitive to environmental toxins than others, but some I have known would have to live in a bubble to avoid these. If this was not true at an earlier time, I want to know how they acquired this sensitivity.

 

[picante]

If you find the cyanobacteria hypothesis of interest then I would suggest reviewing this article - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3295368/

Thank you, that's really interesting. I wonder how you would get BMAA out of your cells, if it gets "mistakenly" incorporated into protein chains, which then misfold and aggregate.

If crops are irrigated with cyanobacteria-contaminated water, would they tend to absorb the cyanobacteria or not?

And as for hotpotting in Yellowstone, I don't see how you would absorb it through your skin. We were careful not to immerse our heads, since giardia was always a risk.

Yellowstone is a hot-spot for scientific research. There seem to be zillions of studies on the hot spring basins:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2006/february8/yellowstone-020806.html

 

[Wally]

@picante,
I am going to try to contact Dr. Cox to see if he is familiar with ME/CFS and if he can provide any more information on how he thinks L-Serine might work for Alzheimer's patients (i.e. does he think it can de-tox the brain or only act to block the uptake or reaction of the BMAA). I will post a follow-up in this thread if I find out any additional information.

Edit -

The idea, explained Sandra Banack, a researcher at the Institute for Ethnomedicine, is that large doses of L-serine may be able to “outcompete” low levels of BMAA in the body, preventing it from becoming incorporated into proteins.

www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/2014/dec/als-and-algae

 

[picante]

That's great, @Wally!

I've just e-mailed the Yellowstone Park Historian, an old friend. I asked if he was aware of the research on BMAA and ALS/Alzheimer's, and does he know anything about the incidence of either disease in long-term park employees.

 

[Wally]

If crops are irrigated with cyanobacteria-contaminated water, would they tend to absorb the cyanobacteria or not?

I believe in the studies that have been done on cyanobacteria that it can end up in crops/plants and I would assume this is from uptake of the bacteria that is found in the soil and/or water, which feeds the plants. If these plants are then ingested by humans or indirectly ingested through eating animals that eat these plants, then the question is how much of the bacteria transfers into humans to cause or contribute to a disease process.

Here is another recent finding regarding a virus found in algae that appears to cause cognitive problems in mice that you might also be interested in reading. See, http://hub.jhu.edu/2014/11/11/algae-virus-cognitive-function and http://www.pnas.org/content/111/45/16106.abstract

Here are some additional articles/discussion re the hypothesis that herpesviruses may be a contributing factor to Alzheimer's Disease. Those pesky herpesviruses keep showing up at the scene of many crimes. More fuel for the hypothesis that an environmental toxin and an infectious agent could be one of the combinations needed to direct a pathway to neuro immune dysfunction. See, http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...link-to-alzheimers-disease.33430/#post-521197

 

[Wally]

@picante,
Have I worn you (and others) out yet with articles to read? Breadcrumbs seem to be everywhere I look.

Set forth below is a blog post by Vincent Racaniello, someone in the virology world who ME/CFS patients may have become familiar with if they followed discussions related to XMRV. In this post Professor Racaniello makes reference to research related to ALS and viruses (specifically "retroviruses"). The links in his post make interesting reading, as well as the comment section in one of the links.

http://www.virology.ws/2014/08/24/amyotrophic-lateral-sclerosis-and-viruses/

Many people have a new awareness of the disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, thanks to the Ice Bucket Challenge initiated by the ALS Association. Fewer might know that retroviruses have been proposed to play a role in the development of the disease.

Edit - another recent article on ALS and cyanobacteria dated 12/11/2014. See, http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/2014/dec/als-and-algae

 

[Wally]

@Wally
You might investigate neurotoxic poisons in shellfish while you're at it. This might explain a number of outbreaks, but it would not explain the increased vulnerability of nurses, because these are generally not transmitted from person to person. There was a patient cohort in Hawaii which had high incidence of anticardiolipin antibodies, which are also associated with shellfish poisoning. A subset of MS and SLE patients also show these antibodies.

@anciendaze,
This is the most recent study (from Sweden) that I found related to BMAA and fish. http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/141106/srep06931/full/srep06931.html

While ingesting the cyanobacteria through food might explain a gradual accumulation of BMAA in the body, I would think that a significant "neurotoxic" bloom of algae that became aerosolized might explain a larger cluster outbreak where eating fish was not a common denominator.

 

[picante]

@picante,
Have I worn you (and others) out yet with articles to read? Breadcrumbs seem to be everywhere I look.

No, you haven't worn me out, because I'm not keeping up. I'll get to them after the New Year.

 

[unto]

hello and good at all in 2015; I wanted to give my opinion and my experience ...
I think there is a continuous global epidemic of ME, because the infections occur every day around the world ....
I am convinced of this because, I'm sick of ME for 30 years, I believe I have transmitted the disease to various people (family, friends, partner ..).
1) ME is not genetic, because people do not become ill relatives,
2) ME is not the environment because they are sick people who have attended exclusively outside of their homes or work ...
3) ME is not caused by a transient because people have become ill after 20 years of onset of ME on my body, in fact, my experience shows that the infection that causes ME is always active.
The history of ME is quite clear many local epidemics worldwide, professional groups most affected: nurses and school teachers, who spends much time in the same space with people potentially sick (sick children)
no longer hear talk of epidemics perhaps because the germ (virus) has been adapted to the host causing more moderate reactions
good night

 

[jann1033]

...[/QUOTE]no longer hear talk of epidemics perhaps because the germ (virus) has been adapted to the host causing more moderate reactions
good night[/QUOTE]
Or more have developed antibodies to it.

Personally I think all my immediate relatives have gotten minor bouts but for the most part recovered. These were constantly around when for the first 10years of my illness plus on vacation with me when i think i got it. (Btw, somewhere some one mentioned Stock Island as being a hospital. I believe if my horrific memory serves me, the cluster was actually on Stock Island in the basically , what we would call today, an urgent care, not a fulfledged hospital. And obviously those who came down with it didn't live in a bubble.)

I've often wondered if the early" non HIV AIDS "nomenclature could have been at all accurate given the large homosexual population in Key West at that time as well as many indigent drug users there at the time. I remember attempting to use a public restroom early in the morning( after the infamous sunset party) that had a floor covered wall to wall with human urine and feces, in other words, breeding ground for illness. It was a pretty wild area then , not one we were happy to be at with our small children lol!

 

[Antares in NYC]

@picante,
I am going to try to contact Dr. Cox to see if he is familiar with ME/CFS and if he can provide any more information on how he thinks L-Serine might work for Alzheimer's patients (i.e. does he think it can de-tox the brain or only act to block the uptake or reaction of the BMAA). I will post a follow-up in this thread if I find out any additional information.

Edit - www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/2014/dec/als-and-algae

Great articles on the BMAA and cyanobacteria connection. Absolutely fascinating and great food for thought. It would be very interesting to reach out to Dr. Cox and get his opinion on ME/CFS.

Thanks for posting. Really interesting angle.

 

[redaxe]

I can add my own experience here - I attended a church in Sydney, Australia and there was a group of us who would regularly train in crossfit out of a friends garage that he had converted to a gym.

I started coming down with colds and flu like symptoms (swollen glands, migraines, intense sugar cravings, unrefreshing sleep, cognitive impairment) in the summer of 2013. That struck me as odd at the time because I never normally got that sort of thing in the summer months in Australia

Having no idea what was coming my way, so I continued exercising (believing in the whole no pain, no gain mantra) but I started noticing that I was feeling weaker and was actually deconditioning. The illness rapidly accelerated and in a few weeks I found myself out of work and sleeping for mostly 15 hours a day. I tried to continue exercising, we had a 'Tough Mudder' coming up, at the time I believed that exercising would help in getting through to recovery and staying busy, I completed the obstacle course ok but the next morning a felt absolutely dreadful and I'm not sure If I ever completely recovered from that.
I met up with the others at church and they were laughing and high-fiving each other - that was when I knew something was really wrong, although I should have been onto it months before. I really went downhill from there but by that time I was wise enough to know that any further exercise was foolish. Soon I found myself able to do no more exercise than walking around the block once a day....

Anyway I found out much later that another person in our group came down with this at about the same time I did and under similar circumstances although we weren't really good friends and at the time I had no idea this was happening to others as well.
So what are the odds that a rare illness like this strikes 2 people (unwittingly & separately) at about the same time in the same circle of people?

 

[wastwater]

Hi,I was looking into my genes and saw a compound called ptx1 mentioned.Im guessing it might be referring to this http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2119553/ something called chlamydomonas and its connection to algaehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlamydomonas