Hi Snowathlete, RE
have their been any studies on polio, or antibodies to it in ME/CFS people?
To the best of my knowledge there havent been any recent studies into polio antibodies and ME, except of course the only person who actually seems to get the idea that ME existed long before 1988 and takes the old research into ME seriously, especially the information from epidemics, because it get rid of the problems of mixed cohorts that we are plagued with today, this of course is Dr Byron Hyde, he states in this article
http://www.wicfs-me.org/Pdf Files/Byron Hyde - Complexities of Diagnosis.pdf
Another curious feature is that many acute onset ME patients have incredibly high polio 1, 2, or 3
antibody levels. They obviously do not have polio, but perhaps some of the viruses that cause acute onset
ME are similar in nature to poliovirus.
Unfortunately the rest of the ME researchers seem to be asleep at the wheel when it comes to the link between polio and ME (it would help if they read the older research which is full of very interesting leads which have largely been forgotten about today)
The three Polio viruses are all Enteroviruses a large family of very similar viruses, the thing that separates the polio viruses from the rest is that they cause paralysis in a minority of patients, although there is another Enterovirus that can cause the same symptoms Coxsackie A7 which has been called the fourth polio virus.
Enteroviruses have been proven to cause encephalitis, muscle infection, serious heart conditions etc and when you look at the older research which isnt beset with the problems of mixed cohorts, you find that what they are reporting fits with what Enteroviruses do.
So you not only have people in previous ME epidemics being immune to Polio, and showing high antibodies to Polio viruses when they dont have Polio which implies that I virus almost identical to Polio must be present e.g. another Enterovirus.
You also see that the epidemics have very short incubation periods of under a week, exactly the same incubation period as Enteroviruses including Polio.
The illness is biphasic starting with a relatively minor infection, which is then followed by the second long lasting ME phase, a pattern that is consistent with Enterovirus infection.
You also find that ME epidemics and infection rates normally occur in late summer early autumn, which is well known to be the peak time for Enterovirus infections.
As the article above shows the symptoms and recorded damage found in Post Polio Syndrome and ME are extremely similar, which implies a extremely similar virus e.g. member of the Enterovirus family.
The reason why Enteroviruses werent found in the early epidemics is quite simply they didnt have a test that could find them, Polio was only discovered because Polio has a mortality rate of about 2% and they found the virus by dissecting dead patients and sticking the samples under microscopes because ME patients dont tend to die so rapidly they never had any bodies to dissect.
As time went on and viral detection methods improves Enteroviruses were recovered from 4 of the epidemics.
Since then, a Google scholar search using terms like Enteroviruses, Coxsackie virus and Echo virus, plus ME, PVFS etc reveals that Enteroviruses have been found in ME patients over and over again, by blood test, faeces test, muscle biopsy, stomach biopsy, in the spinal fluid and in the brain at autopsy.
Such as
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(70)91097-4/abstract
http://pmj.bmj.com/content/66/777/526.full.pdf
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(88)92722-5/abstract#
http://bmb.oxfordjournals.org/content/47/4/872.short
In the new Byron Hyde ME definition
http://www.hfme.org/Other/DefinitionBooklet_Sept_2011.pdf page 24 he explains how during the 1980s when ME was sweeping across Canada, doctors were regularly testing these patients for Epstein Barr virus and the results came back negative, but a Dr McLaughlin sent thousands of these samples for further viral testing, the finding was that only one viral group was responsible for theses thousands of sick patients Enteroviruses, including a new previously unidentified strain. Dr Hyde also ran his own tests on patients and found that they were infected with Enteroviruses.
Recently we have had Dr Chia finding 80% of acute onset patients have Enteroviral infections that he has found by stomach biopsy.
So what has been the result of all this research, absolutely nothing, the likes of the CDC and Wessely School have ignored it all, and have instead wasted all available money trying to imply that ME patients are nuts, and have produced and endless stream of crap CFS definitions that dont define ME, and guarantee that vast numbers of other people who have other known fatigue causing illnesses get misdiagnosed as having CFS and are left to suffer.
My hope is that the Lipkin Pathogen search will be based on selecting the right cohort of ME patients and based on the evidence of the past, what he will find is Enteroviruses, and because he is such a big name in the medical world, the results will actually be taken seriously this time, and more reliable tests and treatments developed. Fingers crossed!
All the best