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Dr. Klinghardt: "The role of retroviruses in chronic illness – a clinician’s perspective"

Learner1

Senior Member
Messages
6,305
Location
Pacific Northwest
There's little evidence that drugs damage mitochondria, except perhaps for a few drugs like metformin, tetracycline and minocycline.
This is not true at all. At the 2016 United Mitochondrial Disease Conference, researchers shared that 75% of drugs damage mitochondria. Robert Naviaux stood up to the microphone during the Q&A period, turned to the 350 doctors in the audience and and said that doctors need to be careful of what they are prescribing to their mito disease patients so as not to do damage to their delicate mitochondria

It is prudent to look into the effects of any drug on mitochondria. NSAIDS, psychiatric drugs, statins, metformin, corticosteroids, fluoroquinolones and other antibiotics, Parkinson's drugs, anesthetics, chemotherapy drugs, and many others damage mitochondria.

http://www.medsafe.govt.nz/profs/PUArticles/June2017/MitochondrialDisordersMedicinestoAvoid.htm

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5225206_Medication-induced_mitochondrial_damage_and_disease

https://www.mitopatients.org/mitodisease/potentially-harmful-drugs
 

Navid

Senior Member
Messages
564
Can you please share a bit more about the ARV protocol you followed?

Did you start Isentress and Viread at the same time?

Did you start 'low and slow'? And how long did you take them?

Did the ARVs cause a temporary or permanent worsening of ME?

I did ARV's over 6 years ago. I started out very low and slow. I must admit my guidance was probably not the best. I am not a good case to compare to because I cannot tolerate anything. But in the case of ARV's, the intolerance lead to a further worsening of all my ME symptoms...particularly fatigue and ANS dysfunction. I have read that ARV's have helped others though, so who is to say. For me they were just another super strong medicine that made me sicker.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
This is not true at all. At the 2016 United Mitochondrial Disease Conference, researchers shared that 75% of drugs damage mitochondria. Robert Naviaux stood up to the microphone duting the Q&A period, turned to the 350 doctors in the audience and and said that doctors need to be careful of what they are prescribing to their mito disease patients so as not to do damage to their delicate mitochondria

Sorry but you are wrong there.

There is a different between opinion/speculation and fact. Naviaux is providing an opinion, not a fact. A scientific fact is something which has lots of studies to back it up. There are very few studies that actually show any evidence of mitochondrial damage from drugs; I know, because I looked for these studies but found very little.

The links you gave do not provide evidence, only someone's speculation that the drugs on their list might cause mitochondrial toxicity. Thus if you have a mitochondrial disease, I agree it may be prudent to avoid this small number of drugs that that some people think potentially might cause mitochondrial ill effects. But that still does not prove that these drugs cause mitochondria damage.

And in any case, from Naviaux's own statement, these issues only apply to patients with mitochondrial diseases. Given that ME/CFS does not appear to be a mitochondrial disease in the normal understanding of that term, it's not clear that these issues to apply to ME/CFS.
 
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Learner1

Senior Member
Messages
6,305
Location
Pacific Northwest
@Hip
I provided 3 references, and an account of the researchers, who had TESTED the drugs effects on mitochondria.

And, many of us have impacts to our mitochondria. Mine were damaged by ciprofloxacin, carboplatin and paclitaxel, so I am well aware that drugs do damage mitochondria. I have had mitochondrial function testing that showed abnormal function in complexes I-IV.

The Lights also found that those with adrenergic and muscarinic antibodies have mitochondrial disease SNPs. Alan Light presented this at last year's OMF Symposium. Look it up...
 

Learner1

Senior Member
Messages
6,305
Location
Pacific Northwest
@Hip Here are more resources in mitochondria damaging drugs:

https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/whats-behind-heartbreaking-risk-anti-inflammatory-drugs/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3760005/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/21120605/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5736306/

There are thousands of articles. It is not at all speculative that mitochondrial function can be impacted negatively by pharmaceutical drugs in people with mitochondrial disease as well as in "healthy" people.
 

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Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
@Hip Here are more resources in mitochondria damaging drugs:

These papers do not actually demonstrate permanent mitochondrial damage; they just show mitochondrial dysfunction. For example, this paper that you cited finds that certain antibiotics such as quinolones, aminoglycosides and beta-lactams can inhibit the mitochondrial complexes while being taken, which will then temporarily reduce energy output of the mitochondria.

Similarly this paper you cited found that the drugs clomipramine, desipramine and norfluoxetine (an active metabolite of fluoxetine) inhibit mitochondria complexes I, II/III and IV.

Now if your energy metabolism is already weak because you have ME/CFS or a mitochondrial disease, then certainly you would be wise to be wary of drugs that can reduce mitochondrial function and energy production.

But that does not necessarily mean that the mitochondria are permanently damaged by these drugs.

Though conceivably the energy deficit might cause some damage in the cell or the organ; indeed, the sertraline paper you cited suggests that the liver damage that this antidepressant can sometimes cause may arise from its ability to inhibit the mitochondrial complexes in the liver.

So there may be downstream damage that results from inhibition of mitochondrial functioning and energy production. But that's not the same as saying that these drugs damage the mitochondria themselves.
 

Wishful

Senior Member
Messages
5,684
Location
Alberta
I mean if there are proven technologies like DRACO and the T-cell therapy Viralym-m that vitually eradicate viral infections at the root of our illnesses why are so many still suffering?
@Navid?

Maybe the viral infections are not actually the root of our illnesses? Hypotheses are wonderful, but if you try an effective treatment for a hypothetical cause, and the ME/CFS symptoms remain, it's time to reexamine the hypothesis in the light of this evidence.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
Hypotheses are wonderful, but if you try an effective treatment for a hypothetical cause, and the ME/CFS symptoms remain, it's time to reexamine the hypothesis in the light of this evidence.

True.

But equally if you try an antiviral treatment on severe bedbound ME/CFS patients, and this results in the majority of these patients improving so much that they are able to go back to work, that tends to support the viral hypothesis. This is precisely what happened when John Chia used a combination of interferon alpha and interferon delta on 11 severe enterovirus ME/CFS patients, and 6 returned to work as a result. See his paper.
 

Wishful

Senior Member
Messages
5,684
Location
Alberta
Since many of us initially trigger on immune system activation, perhaps some are sensitive to continual triggering, and removal of the constant triggering allows them to return to a milder form of ME/CFS?
 

Navid

Senior Member
Messages
564
Maybe the viral infections are not actually the root of our illnesses? Hypotheses are wonderful, but if you try an effective treatment for a hypothetical cause, and the ME/CFS symptoms remain, it's time to reexamine the hypothesis in the light of this evidence.
This is what I'm leaning towards believing after years of trying abx, av's and arv's.....and having negative reactions and no improvement with all 3 classes of drugs.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
Since many of us initially trigger on immune system activation, perhaps some are sensitive to continual triggering, and removal of the constant triggering allows them to return to a milder form of ME/CFS?

That's certainly a possibly, that the immune system has become extra sensitized (eg by immune priming), and thus reacts more strongly to the presence of relatively low-level viral infection. But it also could be that the chronic low-level presence of the virus creates this sensitization.
 
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Navid

Senior Member
Messages
564
True.

But equally if you try an antiviral treatment on severe bedbound ME/CFS patients, and this results in the majority of these patients improving so much that they are able to go back to work, that tends to support the viral hypothesis. This is precisely what happened when John Chia used a combination of interferon alpha and interferon delta on 11 severe enterovirus ME/CFS patients, and 6 returned to work as a result. See his paper.
Maybe I'm just an anomaly but this approach did nothing positive for me....after many years of trying different approaches and different drugs. I think the viral/bacterial-infection theory may be wrong for some of us.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
Maybe I'm just an anomaly but this approach did nothing positive for me....after many years of trying different approaches and different drugs. I think the viral/bacterial-infection theory may be wrong for some of us.

The published studies show that not all patients respond to antiviral treatment, even if they have evidence of active viral infection. So it's a matter of luck as well.

Did you try the herpesvirus antivirals for long enough? It takes 3 to 4 months just for the very first benefits to manifest, and a year or two for the full benefits.

Have you been properly tested for enterovirus? It's only the ARUP Lab tests that are sensitive enough to detect chronic enterovirus infection by a blood test. Or better still, Dr Chia's stomach biopsy: this can detect enteroviruses that even the ARUP Lab tests cannot measure. Unfortunately we are currently lacking good antivirals for enterovirus, but oxymatrine can help some patients. Chia also uses Epivir and more recently tenofovir.

I have high titers to enterovirus (to CVB4), but oxymatrine and Epivir did not help; I've yet to try tenofovir properly.
 
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Wishful

Senior Member
Messages
5,684
Location
Alberta
This is precisely what happened when John Chia used a combination of interferon alpha and interferon delta on 11 severe enterovirus ME/CFS patients, and 6 returned to work as a result. See his paper.

To me, 6 of 11 (meaning 5 didn't respond to the treatment) doesn't strongly support the hypothesis. It tells me that the hypothesis only applies to a limited subset of ME/CFS, and thus isn't the core cause. Furthermore, if it was only tested on a limited subset (those who were severely bedbound), did the researchers expect that it wouldn't work on non-bed-bound victims? To me the hypothesis should be: 'Chronic viral infection may cause ME/CFS victims to experience more severe symptoms than those without such infection'. The results support that hypothesis.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
To me, 6 of 11 (meaning 5 didn't respond to the treatment) doesn't strongly support the hypothesis. It tells me that the hypothesis only applies to a limited subset of ME/CFS, and thus isn't the core cause.

I am not sure that conclusion necessarily follows, as in the non-responders to interferon, their ME/CFS might conceivably still be due to enterovirus, but they just did not respond to the anti-enteroviral treatment. There are few medical treatments that work universally on all patients. Whether it works or not often comes down to individual genetics.

The same is true in the interferon treatment of hepatitis C virus: this only works on a subset, but nobody would suggest that the patients it fails to work on do not have hep C, or that their symptoms are not caused by this hep C virus. In hepatitis C virus infection the genetics behind the response to interferon have been studied.



Furthermore, if it was only tested on a limited subset (those who were severely bedbound), did the researchers expect that it wouldn't work on non-bed-bound victims?

I don't think so, because apart from Dr Chia's interferon study, two previous interferon studies also showed this treatment works on enterovirus ME/CFS patients, and I don't think these other studies only focused on severe patients.



To me the hypothesis should be: 'Chronic viral infection may cause ME/CFS victims to experience more severe symptoms than those without such infection'. The results support that hypothesis.

That hypothesis would make sense if patients already had some degree of fatigue and brain fog before they caught the viral infection which triggered their ME/CFS, and the viral infection then just worsened their symptoms. But people are normally completely without any ME/CFS symptoms before their viral infection, and then they develop full ME/CFS afterwards. So to me that does not suggest the viral infection worsens ME/CFS, but suggests it may be the cause of it.

But certainly some infections can be exacerbating factors in ME/CFS, like Bartonella, Babesia or Brucella.

The trouble with interferon treatment of enterovirus is that unlike with hepatitis C virus, it does not fully eliminate the enterovirus from the body. So the virus is still there, and that may explain why the patients were not fully free of ME/CFS symptoms after in treatment; and it most likely explains why their ME/CFS returns a few months post-treatment, as the virus slowly grows back.

If drug companies were to develop a drug that could fully eliminate enterovirus, then we could very easily work out whether enterovirus is the sole cause of ME/CFS in the enterovirus subset.



By the way, I've just written an MEpedia article on non-cytolytic / non-cytopathic enterovirus, which is the particular mutated form of enterovirus found in ME/CFS. This mutated enterovirus follows a different lifecycle compared to regular enterovirus, which is why it is so hard to eliminate.
 
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Messages
28
Maybe I'm just an anomaly but this approach did nothing positive for me....after many years of trying different approaches and different drugs. I think the viral/bacterial-infection theory may be wrong for some of us.
What was your onset?
 

Markus83

Senior Member
Messages
277
@administrator: As I see, you edited my posts, for example #14, with the result that my strong warning against Klinghardt got lost. This might cause harm to patients who otherwise would be more skeptical about this guy. It's a matter of fact, that the testing Klinghardt offers, called "psycho-kinesiology", is total quackery. If this is not allowed to speak out in this forum, then you better delete the complete commentary, because now there are made statements under my name which don't represent my opinion. All negative aspects were deleted and the positive kept. It's like bad journalism and the impression, which the reader gets, is now very biased towards a positive view of Klinghardt, which was the exact opposite I wanted to stress. I would like to get a notification if comments of mine are edited, too.
 

junkcrap50

Senior Member
Messages
1,330
@administrator: As I see, you edited my posts, for example #14, with the result that my strong warning against Klinghardt got lost. This might cause harm to patients who otherwise would be more skeptical about this guy. It's a matter of fact, that the testing Klinghardt offers, called "psycho-kinesiology", is total quackery. If this is not allowed to speak out in this forum, then you better delete the complete commentary, because now there are made statements under my name which don't represent my opinion. All negative aspects were deleted and the positive kept. It's like bad journalism and the impression, which the reader gets, is now very biased towards a positive view of Klinghardt, which was the exact opposite I wanted to stress. I would like to get a notification if comments of mine are edited, too.

For real? Is this true? Anyway to check and verify this?

Holy crap. It's true!! See the bottom right hand corner in post #14!
upload_2018-9-29_11-22-35.png
WTF!!! Is this the next big drama for phoenixrising? This is very dangerous for this forum. I will probably stop visiting and switch to another forum if this is truly true.

@Markus83, you should "@" more experienced people on this forum to get more attention to this.
 

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Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
@administrator: As I see, you edited my posts, for example #14, with the result that my strong warning against Klinghardt got lost.

There are no forum rules prohibiting criticizing a doctor or a health treatment, so unless you made rude remarks to a forum member, I wouldn't have thought that you broke any forum rules. But I believe moderation actions should not be discussed on the public forum, so you would need to contact by PM one of the moderators such as Sushi to discuss.
 
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keepontruckin

Senior Member
Messages
210
I have to say that although he is very personable and seems to have some beneficial treatments, we know someone who had a very bad reaction to one of his treatments because she did not have the enzyme to enable her to process it. Instead of admitting that perhaps the treatment was a mistake for her he said she was possessed and gave her the names of some contact people in the US that she should see. It was very sad to do that to a vulnerable young person. Anything to cover the fact that he harmed her.
He has stated publicly and these remarks are posted on the Internet coming out of his mouth in video or written that he does not benefit from the Biopure product line personally. He says the company belongs to a good friend, he has helped to develop some of the products. But the fact is this woman who owns Biopure is the mother of his two daughters. He only has two children and she is the mother.
I noticed a couple of times that things he suggested doing on the internet such as squeezing my head caused me to feel badly enough that I thought I needed to go running to their office for help.
It is a business.
Many but not all people do say that he has helped them.