Indications that XMRV is congenital

[redo]

Recently we've learned that researchers from the WPI are thinking autism and XMRV may be linked.

As I've understood it, the consensus is that autism is something you're born with. Or congenital as it's called. Which gives one reason to suspect that XMRV may be transmitted from the umbilical cord to the unborn child.

And if it may be transmitted to children who are to become autistic during pregnancy, than I guess it could also be transmitted to children who are not to become autistic as well. Only that it lies latent, and may activate much later in life, after the bodily development is done... (such as in people with CFS, if XMRV is indeed casual, or co-casual).

What do you people think? Could it be that in most or many cases it's a latent virus we're born with? (which our mothers have caught at some point, or got through the umbilical cord themselves).

 

[redo]

If this is true, then I also guess that CFS sick mothers who get children are some 10-20 times more likely to get an autistic child than a "healthy control" mom...

 

[floydguy]

I haven't heard anyone from WPI say that XMRV is congenital. Do you have a link for that?

 

[usedtobeperkytina]

I think I got it from my mother. She has cognitive symptoms, but not immune system symptoms. No fatigue.

My sister has same thing I have, although she prefers other names.

My other sister is bi-polar and has narcolepsy.

Don't get me started on my grandparents and cousins.

Tina

 

[serenity]

i certainly have a colorful family history as well, alcoholism bi-polar disorder & autism - all included.
i have a huge family, but there are certainly a lot of health issues on both sides.

 

[caledonia]

Somewhere someone (I think it was Nancy Klimas?) said that there is vertical transmission (ie, from mother to child).

 

[Tembo]

My girlfriend - cfs sufferer has two autistic children. I was wondering......here in Australia there is lots of controversy as to whether the MMR Vaccine given to babies is a cause of autism. Im not extrememly knowledgable on the subject but I was wondering......if we pass on xmrv to our children is it possible that the live virus in the vaccines are whats triggering the xmrv and causing autism? Make me wonder now.

 

[thegodofpleasure]

Premature speculation

If this is true, then I also guess that CFS sick mothers who get children are some 10-20 times more likely to get an autistic child than a "healthy control" mom...

What's the basis for this statement redo ?

In the absence of supporting evidence at this stage, are you perhaps getting a bit carried away on a tide of XMRVspeculation ?

Don't get me wrong - I strongly believe in what the WPI are saying with regards to XMRV and am convinced that an association exists with ME/CFS. I'm also well aware that this is a retrovirus that we're talking about and so maybe, in time, all sorts of other associations will become clear. But for now (IMO), such speculation is premature and potentially gives succour to those who would seek to undermine us . :Retro wink:

TGOP

 

[taniaaust1]

As I've understood it, the consensus is that autism is something you're born with. Or congenital as it's called. Which gives one reason to suspect that XMRV may be transmitted from the umbilical cord to the unborn child.

Not all believe autism is something one is born with. I know someone whos baby clearly developed autism after a vaccination (within 24hrs of it, her baby never looked at faces or smiled again).

What do you people think? Could it be that in most or many cases it's a latent virus we're born with? (which our mothers have caught at some point, or got through the umbilical cord themselves).

I inherited my mild autism, I have Asperger's Syndrome from my father.... and have passed the autism onto my youngest daughter. Interestingly.. the CFS runs down to me from my fathers side of the family (not throu the maternal line as one researcher has come up with)... as we have other members with these issues.. FM and CFS, all on ,my dads family side.

maybe XMRV is transmitted from mother to babe.. but that dont explain how i got it throu fathers side of family (thou I have prostate cancer on both sides of family so it is possible i could of caught it from the other side).

 

[bullybeef]

It could explain why autism is spectrum disorder, and why many children 20-30 years ago have remained undiagnosed until they are adults. It makes complete sense that ME/Autism/XMRV is hereditary. We know they use family medical history information to diagnose ME. Which also highlights the nonsense of ME being a somatoform disorder - I thought you couldn't 'catch' a disillusion?!!

 

[Tembo]

Not all believe autism is something one is born with. I know someone whos baby clearly developed autism after a vaccination (within 24hrs of it, her baby never looked at faces or smiled again)..

Thats just awful tania Do you know which immunization it was- just out of curiousity?

 

[Angela Kennedy]

It could explain why autism is spectrum disorder, and why many children 20-30 years ago have remained undiagnosed until they are adults. It makes complete sense that ME/Autism/XMRV is hereditary. We know they use family medical history information to diagnose ME. Which also highlights the nonsense of ME being a somatoform disorder - I thought you couldn't 'catch' a disillusion?!!

Actually the psychs are arguing you can- that family dysfunction and learned behaviour in the family causes the somatoform disorder CFS.
Actually, ANYTHING can be argued as a 'risk factor' in their discourse, as we've seen.

 

[helsbells]

I have Asperger's Syndrome and ME also plus other stuff - mine came from my mothers side but there is no one else who has had such major immunological probs or ME so maybe it was a predisposition I inherited and a virus exploited that.

 

[redo]

What's the basis for this statement redo ?

In the absence of supporting evidence at this stage, are you perhaps getting a bit carried away on a tide of XMRVspeculation ?

Don't get me wrong - I strongly believe in what the WPI are saying with regards to XMRV and am convinced that an association exists with ME/CFS. I'm also well aware that this is a retrovirus that we're talking about and so maybe, in time, all sorts of other associations will become clear. But for now (IMO), such speculation is premature and potentially gives succour to those who would seek to undermine us . :Retro wink:

TGOP

Well, discussion forums aren't just about exchanging cold hard facts (no pun intended). It's also about hypothesizing. As you can see I am following the thread of "what if the autism and XMRV link proposed by Mikovits/WPI is true". If that link is true, then what may that tell us about the transmission. It would indicate that it can be congenital.

And, when some studies have shown healthy control rates of 2%, 3%, 3.7% and 3-7%' of XMRV. Than there would be reason to suspect that the mothers who get children who are to get CFS, would be positive a lot more often. And it would also be fair to suspect that those who have CFS would be positive more often, and have a much higher chance of getting autistic children (naturally - if XMRV and autism is indeed connected that way).

You don't get tone of voice on message boards. So don't get me wrong, I am not proposing this as neither fact or something I am certain of. It's a hypothesis for discussion, and if you'd like to discuss it you're welcome.

I've got four cases of autism in my extended family, which gives us a autism rate of around 9%. I haven't thought a lot about it until now, but it's pretty high. And I think many others on the board have the same experience. My definition of extended family is nuclear family plus uncles and aunts (not wed into family) and cousins.


___________________________________________
'The 3-7% are also other MLVs. So the number would likely get lower if other MLVs are taken out of the equation.

 

[natasa778]

There is absolutely no reason why XMRV would not be BOTH congenital and acquired later in life, depending on individual circumstances. Just look at HIV. It is both - you can get it from your mum, through placental/vaginal transmission AND later through breast milk. And it can actually be passed as a germline infection, inbedded in your DNA in Mendelian fashion (from either mums egg or dad's sperm).

And of course you can acquire it later in life, by whichever means.

 

[redo]

Yes, of course, one route of transmission doesn't rule out others.

You could add blood transfusion, intercourse and dirty needles to the list for HIV. For XMRV, other plausible ways of transmission are insect bites (e.g. mosquitos) and animal bites (e.g. ticks or other infected animals).

The thread isn't about the hypothesis of congeniality as the one and only way.

But it's about the discussion of the hypothesis that it could be important, or perhaps the most important way to get it.

Personally, I think that if the autism and XMRV link is real, then I guess that they in most cases have got it congenially.

A study later on, which could give pointers to how we've got it, would be to do a "healthy control study" on babies. Most babies take blood samples at birth anyway. If they test positive as often as older healthy controls, then we'd be onto something about how we get it. If they almost never test positive, then we've turned that stone, and we could look for other routes of transmission.

 

[Stone]

If you take the assumption, for the sake of discussion only, that both CFS and Autism can be caused by the retrovirus XMRV then it's expected that a mother who is XMRV positive could/would pass this on to her child just like HIV is/can be passed from mother to child. Now let's assume, again only for the sake of discussion, that XMRV requires a triggering event such as a challenge or assault to the immune system (along with another possible immune factor) in order to be turned on, then a vaccine could do that. Vaccines cause white cells to proliferate and in that process the 'viral load' of XMRV might naturally be increased causing a 'disease state' to occur and if that happens at an unfortunate moment in a child's development, it seems possible that a vaccine could trigger autism in an XMRV positive child, the same way that perhaps a triggering event such as a viral illness, exposure to toxins, stress or some other assault to the body (and possibly another "factor X") could trigger CFS in an XMRV positive adult or adolescent. It explains how so many "healthy" controls can be XMRV positive but not show disease (yet). It could be that there just has not been a sufficient triggering event to 'turn on' the virus and provoke a disease state (and may God forbid such a triggering event). I believe I heard Dr. Mikovits speak about this briefly an Dr Klimas may have touched on it as well.

To use one person's family as an example, there are three sisters and no brothers. All three sisters have CFS. They all became ill at different ages living separately in different parts of the country. One sister does not have children. One sister has a healthy adult daughter. One sister has two adult children. Her daughter has CFS. Her son has very severe adult ADD, which some have noted seems to share some similar features with autism, at least in him. The son married a woman who has CFS and they have a 1 year old son. In the interest of the baby's overall safety and until his XMRV status is known and until more is understood about the relationship between XMRV, vaccines and autism, they are deferring his vaccinations, even if that means homeschooling him when he's older if it takes that long to find these answers. They have weighed the potential risks against the benefits and have concluded that right now continuing to vaccinate the baby just does not seem worth the risk particularly since the baby is not in daycare and his exposure to other children is fairly limited at this time in his young life. He has had some vaccines but when this possible risk became apparent, they decided to discontinue the vaccines until more is known.

 

[bullybeef]

Another interesting point to all this, with the fact more vaccines are being used and recommended these days to protect against other diseases/conditions, it could mean a huge increases in ASD within the next generation, and in some cases, neuroimmune diseases in others. Basically, it will be interesting to see how many children have been diagnosed with autism since the 1990's, and the turn of the century.

 

[Bob]

I don't know a great deal about autism but what I understand about it is that it has a genetic and an environmental component. Some cases of autism are thought to be more genetic than environmental, and, vice-versa, some are thought to be more environmental... So there maybe subsets of autism.
What i understand about Judy's research, is that she is looking at a significant subset of autism rather than the entire patient population (I'm not 100% sure about this... but it's what i've understood, reading between the lines).

I haven't heard anyone from WPI say that XMRV is congenital. Do you have a link for that?

I have heard Judy Mikovits talking about breast feeding in relation to XMRV, and also talking about possible infection from casual social contact.
So if XMRV is easy to transmit socially, or within families, then a child could become infected soon after birth, even if they were not passed the virus directly from the mother during pregnancy.
It is also possible for a father to directly pass a virus to his child via his sperm, although I forget the details about this... if this happened with XMRV then i think that XMRV would become endogenous in the child, and there is no evidence for XMRV being endogenous in anyone yet.
I think that this has happened, for example, to HHV-6 for a very small group of people.

My girlfriend - cfs sufferer has two autistic children. I was wondering......here in Australia there is lots of controversy as to whether the MMR Vaccine given to babies is a cause of autism. Im not extrememly knowledgable on the subject but I was wondering......if we pass on xmrv to our children is it possible that the live virus in the vaccines are whats triggering the xmrv and causing autism? Make me wonder now.

I recently found out that there may be a correlation between getting a Hepatitis B vaccine and getting ME for many people... me included...

There definitely seems to be a link between ME, XMRV, other pathogens (e.g. HHV-6) and stress on the immune system...
And it is thought that this could be the case for some cases of autism as well (i.e. a link between autism, viral pathogens and stress on the immune system, with a possible genetic factor), and it could turn out that there is a link between a subset of autism and XMRV.

 

[Bob]

I think I got it from my mother. She has cognitive symptoms, but not immune system symptoms. No fatigue.

My sister has same thing I have, although she prefers other names.

My other sister is bi-polar and has narcolepsy.

Don't get me started on my grandparents and cousins.

Tina

i certainly have a colorful family history as well, alcoholism bi-polar disorder & autism - all included.
i have a huge family, but there are certainly a lot of health issues on both sides.

I read some research recently that found a possible strong link between HHV-6 and bi-polar...
(and also a link between HHV-6 and a proportion of the patient population with depression).
It's interesting because of the link between HHV-6 and ME/CFS.