If this test is so good at detecting XMRV in prostate cancer, then why have they not marketed it for prostate cancer patients? Surely that would be a broader market; much more profitable. Cancer patients will want to know their XMRV status too, because it is associated with the more aggressive forms of cancer and would be a diagnostic for the type of treatment needed.
Actually, if you read the Cooperative website, they ARE marketing their test to prostate cancer patients.
Kurt I am sending my blood to Igenex tomorrow for Lyme testing and honestly I'd rather not have lyme, because canadian doctors think that Lyme disease stops at the border- they think it's not prevalent in Canada. Therefore the treatments are difficult to get, usually underground. Visiting the Lyme websites, it sounds like the symptoms are very much overlapping and similar to CFS/ME and it's concerning to me. I also understand that the Lyme test, even western blots are not totally definitive and some doctors treat with antiiotics with only clinical signs of the disease.
What a nightmare and what a big mess.
Yes, this is all a big mess. Cognitive dissonance even when one considers the conflicting results possible for the same test at different labs, Lyme has had this issue for years, and now it appears also XMRV will have that problem.
And I did not mean by saying I hoped I had Lyme that I wanted to have Lyme Disease. Rather I was hoping for some treatable explanation for my CFS. I think this is also what XMRV is about right now, people wanting CFS to be something they can treat. When it comes down to it, we should all hope we do not actually have XMRV. Anyway, good luck with that Lyme test, I did have some gains for a time with several of my Lyme treatments but nothing lasted unfortunately. The Lyme community is struggling with the same issue we are, they have a hard time defining the role of co-infections, and I think in reality many Lyme patients that can not progress on treatments actually have CFS with other primary co-infections, probably there is a lot of overlap.
Levi, I am not sure cancer patients are aware there is a retrovirus lurking on them in the same way than the CFS/ME population is aware of it. For one thing, they got an aggressive cancer- which means very likely it has already spread, usually to the bones. Then it's already too late. In my opinion, while it is interesting to know the link between prostate cancer and XMRV, there will be a need to screen patients BEFORE they get the diagnosis, and it sounds like studies are already happening for women with cervical cancer (Cancer Institute?)
Also, there is no proven causal link between XMRV and prostate cancer at this time. In fact the WPI study showed that there is not even a link between XMRV and RNasL status. But I am sure some prostate patients would be curious about an XMRV link and might want to be tested. Incidentally, there is a race right now among several commercial labs, including some BIG ones that are working on XMRV test development right now, to provide affordable blood bank screening for XMRV.
A general comment, Cooperative uses a CLIA certified lab for their commercial testing so they are in the same league as VIP Dx. I don't know how many more ways I can say this, I believe the Cooperative test has as much going for it as the WPI/VIP test, for many reasons. The many negatives people are posting here is important data that should be taken seriously and can not be easily explained away.