HTLV-1 / XMRV Conference starts today!

[alex3619]

Restricted infection of xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus in human lymphoid tissue
Marta Curriu, Jorge Carrillo, Marta Massanella, Elisabet Garcia, Bonaventura Clotet, Julian Blanco, Cecilia Cabrera.
http://www.retrovirology.com/content/pdf/1742-4690-8-s1-a208.pdf

Hi Bob, this paper is particularly interesting. This is because treatment with antivirals blocks the XMRV. This means its a real virus: non-viral contamination theories are extremely unlikely. Only Coffin's viral contamination theory, with real XMRV, has even a slim chance with this kind of finding. Bye, Alex

 

[Overstressed]

Silverman will present tomorrow I think, his abstract hasn't been published yet. It will be 241 in the list I think, so there's more XMRV stuff coming!

I tried to join this conference since I was in contact for some time with one of the organisers. Unfortunately, I'm not allowed, but the abstracts will be made available for free, she told me.

OS.

 

[Jemal]

Singh's was supposed to be positive, too, and then she found an alternate explanation for her results. We can hope for a positive study, but as they saying goes, we might not want to "count our chickens before they hatch" or before they publish, as the case may be.

Bieger has already presented some of his positive results though. So it will be difficult for him to suddenly come up with an alternate explanation.
Singh believed she might find XMRV in ME/CFS patients, but we never heard from her during her research. The first time we heard from her again was when the negative study popped up.

 

[Jemal]

Retrovirology has posted more information on their website. If you click on the links, you will now get more content. The abstracts are not posted yet.

XMRV infection in human diseases
Otto Erlwein , Mark J Robinson, Steve Kaye, Myra O McClure, Marjorie M Walker, Anup Patel, Wun-Jae Kim, Mongkol Uiprasertkul, Ganesh Gopalakrishnan, Takahiro Kimura and Kikkeri Naresh
http://www.retrovirology.com/content/8/S1/A238

Murine leukemia viruses (MuLV) and Xenotropic MuLV-related viruses exhibit inter-tropic complex recombination patterns
Mattia CF Prosperi , William M Switzer, Walid Heneine and Marco Salemi
http://www.retrovirology.com/content/8/S1/A235

Detection of MLV-like gag sequences in blood samples from a New York state CFS cohort
Maureen R Hanson , Li L Lee, Lin Lin, David E Bell, David Ruppert and David S Bell
http://www.retrovirology.com/content/8/S1/A234

Human infection or lab artifact: will the real XMRV please stand up?
Robert H Silverman
http://www.retrovirology.com/content/8/S1/A241

 

[Jemal]

The Hanson study:

A blinded study was undertaken to determine whether XMRV or MLV-like virus could be detected in peripheral blood from 40 adult subjects divided into three groups: severely ill with CFS, recovered from CFS, and a control group lacking a CFS diagnosis at any time. All patients in thesevere CFS group currently meet Fukuda criteria. Recovered CFS subjects had scores on the SF-36 survey instrument that were significantly lower than the healthy control group, according to Hotellings T2 test. Blood was collected in EDTA tubes and cDNA and DNA made from PBMCs. Plasma was incubated with LNCaP cells that were subsequently passaged. Nested PCR with USB Hot-Start IT FideliTaq was performed with gag primers. Any PCR products of expected sizes were sequenced. Samples were tested for mouse contamination with primers to IAP and/or mouse mitochondrial DNA. gag sequences were detected in both severe and recovered CFS subjects blood as well as in some healthy controls. gag sequences could be amplified from genomic DNA from LNCaP cells of some subjects after 4 or 6 subcultures following incubation with certain subjects plasma, indicating the presence of infectious virus in blood. All gag sequences detected in this cohort were more similar to the MLV-like sequences reported by Lo et al. (2010) than to the XMRV sequences reported by Lombardi et al. (2009). Detection of gag sequences in whole blood genomic DNAs that were negative for mouse IAP and mitochondrial DNA provides strong evidence for infection of humans with MLV-like viruses.

 

[currer]

I think the really interesting one is the Switzer, actually.

"..... recombination in the highly genetically related MuLV have been occurring for some time.

This should scotch the arguments over Lo and Alters findings of PMLVs in CFs patients. As Alter said, they do confirm Mikovits results.

 

[eric_s]

I like that the Hanson study was blinded. Don't see how you can then explain "the contaminant(TM)"'s preference for ME/CFS samples...

 

[Enid]

Quite agree currer - that seems to have opened things up. (your post 26)

 

[eric_s]

I tried to join this conference since I was in contact for some time with one of the organisers. Unfortunately, I'm not allowed, but the abstracts will be made available for free, she told me.

OS.

Thanks, OS. It was a nice try at least. I think it's good if we try to get inside informations from these conferences.

 

[Jemal]

Thanks, OS. It was a nice try at least. I think it's good if we try to get inside informations from these conferences.

Well, Retrovirology is at least posting all the abstracts. They could have put them behind a pay wall. So we have something.

 

[Jemal]

I think the really interesting one is the Switzer, actually.

"..... recombination in the highly genetically related MuLV have been occurring for some time.

This should scotch the arguments over Lo and Alters findings of PMLVs in CFs patients. As Alter said, they do confirm Mikovits results.

Switzer is saying recombination has been occurring for some time, doesn't that work against Coffin as well? He is saying XMRV was a recombination event in a lab.

 

[Esther12]

Switzer is saying recombination has been occurring for some time, doesn't that work against Coffin as well? He is saying XMRV was a recombination event in a lab.

Is this recombination generally, or recombinations that formed XMRV?

It's a big difference. There's a lottery draw every week... but it would be really unlikely to get the same numbers every week. I just listened to the virology podcast, and they said that the chances of two recombinations both forming XMRV would be a hundred million times less likely than your lottery ticket coming up.

I don't understand the data/mechanics enough to have my own opinion, but that's what they said.

 

[currer]

Hi Jemal,
I think that these papers are revealing how readily MLVs recombine. Deckoff-jones once said that it was not convincing to argue that recombination would be a one-off event.
I suppose it is possible that MLVs have been infecting the human population for some time. XMRV may just be the latest and more adapted virus to come along. As viruses travel into new environments (humans) they will re-adapt to be more successful. XMRV could be just the latest one. Coffin could be right, but it proves nothing about MLVs as a potential pathogen in ME/CFS.
The interesting thing would be to see whether people sick prior tho the eighties have XMRV or PMLVs. If what Switzer says is true, perhaps it doesn't matter anyway.

I've just had a quick listen to the Racanello virology podcast too. Where are they coming from?
They go with the contamination argument, but make the mistake of discussing how readily retroviruses recombine.
I thought it was codswallop.

 

[Enid]

And as a complete simpleton may I ask currer too if this goes any way to explaining why those tested this side of the Atlantic come up with MLVs or XMRVs (KdeM).

 

[Bob]

The lymphoma paper is quite dramatic, isnt it?
I remember this was the abstract for the NYAS talk JM gave.

Yes, and it does seem like very solid, high quality, research.

I'm not sure how to interpret the lymphoid tissue one. Am I correct in thinking that there were no antibodies to XMRV env detected? Do you think the lack of immune activation would show XMRV to be more of a threat? Precisely because the body does not react to it as such?
I suppose this study is fairly limited in scope. Just tonsilar tissue over a fairly limited time (14 days?) may not be enough to gauge how the body as a whole would respond.

Yes, I agree with your interpretation. The authors seem to be saying that XMRV would not be eliminated from the body because of the lack of immune response in certain cells. It's a limited study, but interesting.

 

[Jemal]

The abstract by DeMeirleir was withdrawn by the way. It's title was:
Serological evidence of XMRV infection in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients and healthy blood donors from Belgium

I have no idea why it was withdrawn. If KDM did it himself (because he felt there were issues with it or because he wants to publish it in a journal and doesn't want to present just yet) or Retrovirology. Or some other reason entirely.

 

[currer]

Hi Enid,
I am sure you are not a simpleton. Please dont say that. I am just a patient like you.
My guess would be that there would be variants depending on time and place, so I agree with you, Enid.
From what I remember of JM's talks, murine leukimia viruses are known to be pathogenic in mice, so I dont see why they could not be pathogenic in humans. XMRV as such is just one variant, surely.
They tried to use MLVs as vectors for gene therapy but hit problems when some recipients developed leukaemia.
My feeeling is that all this focus on XMRV is political, not scientific.

 

[currer]

And yet he mentioned it at the Invest in ME conference just two weeks ago!

Unfortunately I can remember nothing about it.........!

The abstract by DeMeirleir was withdrawn by the way. It's title was:
Serological evidence of XMRV infection in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients and healthy blood donors from Belgium

I have no idea why it was withdrawn. If KDM did it himself (because he felt there were issues with it or because he wants to publish it in a journal and doesn't want to present just yet) or Retrovirology. Or some other reason entirely.

 

[Bob]

Well, these abstracts have made me feel more optimistic than I have done for months, or even a year!

I'm amazed that there's so much positive research here!

Hanson's study looks far more solid than I thought it would be. It is blinded, and she has used IAP to check for contamination etc etc. It's interesting that she has detected p-type MLV's.

Switzer really seems to be on our side. He genuinely seems to be interested in XMRV. This is very positive news. This abstract challenges Coffin's latest study published in Science. So the CDC are challenging Coffin's recombination paper that prompted the Science editors to write the letter to the WPI. Wow!!!

 

[currer]

Switzer is saying recombination has been occurring for some time, doesn't that work against Coffin as well? He is saying XMRV was a recombination event in a lab.

Hi Jemal,
I think you are right. The last sentence goes..."These results suggest that identification of parental strains of the potential recombinants is difficult and that recombination in the highly genetically related MLV have been occurring for some time."