Novel Retrovirus Mimics HIV Transmission
(if: nice find jimk! The below is the beginning of the article)
Novel Retrovirus Mimics HIV Transmission
By Crystal Phend, Senior Staff Writer, MedPage Today
Published: March 06, 2010
Reviewed by Dori F. Zaleznik, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston.
Action Points
* Caution patients that it is not yet known how common this virus is in the general population nor have researchers proven whether the virus actually causes prostate cancer or other disease.
* Note that this study was published as an abstract and presented at a conference. These data and conclusions should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
SAN FRANCISCO -- A novel retrovirus implicated in prostate cancer appears to be transmitted much the way HIV is, researchers found.
The recently-discovered xenotropic murine leukemia related virus -- dubbed XMRV -- likely spreads through contact with blood and semen, Eric A. Klein, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic, and colleagues reported here at the Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.
Semen dramatically enhanced infectivity of the virus, allowing it to slip more easily into human cells, they found.
"It's behaving just like the two other retroviruses that cause disease in humans," Klein told MedPage Today.
Infectious disease experts, too, have likened their scramble to make sense of the virus to the early days of HIV research, but caution that there has yet to be any clear causal evidence showing that XMRV leads to disease.