• Welcome to Phoenix Rising!

    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of and finding treatments for complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

    To become a member, simply click the Register button at the top right.

Glioblastoma Brain Tumours and Viruses

JillBohr

Senior Member
Messages
247
Location
Columbus, OH
I know this is unrelated to ME/CFS but I can not help but wonder if glioblastoma brain tumour patients have XMRV. My grandfather died of prostate cancer in the mid 80s and my father died of a glioblastoma brain tumour in 1996. Two years later, my oldest son was born and he has autism. My father got sick in the spring of 1996. He thought he had the "flu" and could not get out of bed for several days. My sister-in-law went through this in 1996 as well but she ended up being diagnosed with ME/CFS almost two years later after going through a series of testing. My family was very healthy and very active and we have gone downhill since then. Anyway, there have been some articles published regarding how CMV is active in brain tumour patients. The Economist published a great one but it is no longer available on the internet regarding this particular brain cancer. Here is a link to another one:

http://open.salon.com/blog/amytuteurmd/2009/01/12/does_a_common_virus_cause_brain_cancer

"The saga began in the late 1990s, when Charles Cobbs, a neurosurgeon then at the University of California, San Francisco, started pondering the link between inflam*mation and brain cancer. Malignant tu*mors are often associated with abnormal immune activity, and he wanted to know why. Is it just something that happens out of the blue, or is it possible that theres something maybe driving that inflamma*tory cascade? he recalls wondering.

Because they elicit immune responses, in*fections immediately sprang to mind as pos*sible candidates. Cobbs and his colleagues analyzed glioblastoma samples from 22 pa*tients and found that all harbored CMV. Four out of five people have this virus, which remains in the body for life. Usually a per*sons immune system keeps CMV in a la*tent state in which it does not replicate, but Cobbs found the virus actively reproducing in these tumor cells and not in healthy cells nearby. It was stunningly obvious that these tumors were infected, says Cobbs, whose findings, published in Cancer Research in 2002, were confirmed in 2007 by Duke University neuro-oncologist Duane Mitchell."

I can not help but wonder if XMRV is reactivating common viruses not only in ME/CFS but other diseases as well.
 

Summer

Senior Member
Messages
175
One of my best friends just died of a brain tumor like this, and I have wondered the same thing. He was a net friend of 13 years, and he developed RSD after a very small finger injury, which I think is what disabled Elaine DeFreitas after her car wreck. He had the brain thinking issues, sleep issues, body pain and emotional lability issues as well as just not as much energy. He worked his work week and had to collapse. He had to take a desk job, where he had always did construction type of work.

The brain cancer came on and it was very rapid, even with treatment. I will always wonder about him and XMRV. He also had a lot of allergies/asthma, which is about the only commonality they could find in patients, at the beginning of the outbreaks. Somewhere in all of this XMRV news, I read/heard that it is not just leukemias and lymphomas, but brain tumors are also more common than normal in CFIDS patients.
 

JillBohr

Senior Member
Messages
247
Location
Columbus, OH
Thank you for responding

I have been thinking about this ever since the XMRV article came out. Even before that, I was very intrigued with viruses and my father's brain cancer and my children's autism.

I am not familiar with the North Carolina Orchestra cohort. Forgive me but where can I read more about this? Thank you.
 

Andrew

Senior Member
Messages
2,513
Location
Los Angeles, USA
I can only give you incomplete information about the orchestra. I first read about it in Osler's Web. I remember there was a researcher named Grufferman who was involved. I also remember hearing about it recently somewhere else. A Google search turned up this and this, but I imagine that additional searching could find more.

BTW, in thinking about this more, I might have been mixed up. They did have higher rates of cancer, and I remember brain tumor, but now that I think about it, I don't know how many case.
 

JillBohr

Senior Member
Messages
247
Location
Columbus, OH
Very interesting reading!

Andrew,

Thank you for the links, that is very interesting reading. I did not know that brain cancers have increased 300 percent worldwide and I have never seen it written that cancer is more prevalent in households that have someone with CFS. You must have a photographic memory. Very impressive. I would have written sooner but my kids have hijacked my computer this weekend.

Cheers!