Have any ME patients had improvement treating for enterovirus? What percentage of ME might be due to it?
The therapy which really improves enterovirus-associated ME/CFS patients is interferon alpha or beta, which is potently antiviral for enterovirus. Dr Chia has observed bedbound patients going back to work after 2 or 3 months on interferon. Unfortunately they tend to relapse around 4 to 12 months later. This may be because interferon does not fully eliminate the virus from the body, so the virus slowly claws its way back, and ME/CFS returns.
There are several reasons why you cannot keep doing repeat courses of interferon (the cost, the harsh side effects like depression, and the fact that the body eventually makes antibodies which target the injected interferon and disable it, making further interferon ineffective).
So as it stands, interferon therapy does not appear to be the long term cure for enterovirus ME/CFS, but nevertheless dramatically improves patients in the short term, for up to a year.
Although I do wonder whether if an ME/CFS patient were placed on interferon therapy for a year (like they do with hepatitis patients), would that be able to fully eliminate the virus?
Dr Chia does not us interferon much now, because of the relapse issue.
Apart from that, Dr Chia uses the immunomodulator oxymatrine to treat enterovirus ME/CFS. I've seen some people on this forum move up from severe to moderate ME/CFS as a result of oxymatrine. But at least half the time oxymatrine does not help enterovirus ME/CFS patients.
In around a year or so, a potent new anti-enterovirus drug is coming out, which Dr Chia is very hopeful about. I am looking forward to trying that, as I have high antibody titers to coxsackievirus B4, and my ME/CFS started with a herpangina-type sore throat, so that's good evidence that enterovirus is the issue for me.
What percentage of ME might be due to it?
One study by Dr Chia, where he investigated the likely causes of ME/CFS in 200 consecutive patients, concluded that enterovirus is the probable cause in around half of all cases.