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Transmission from mice to cats to me

Did you have a cat (or contact with a cat) around the time you first got sick?

  • Yes

    Votes: 22 46.8%
  • No

    Votes: 23 48.9%
  • Unsure

    Votes: 2 4.3%

  • Total voters
    47
Messages
65
Location
Australia
Hi All,

I've only just found this forum after getting very interested in researching all of this XMRV stuff.

I'm 25 years old, and have had CFS for 7.5 years (and was sick with Post-Viral Fatigue and Glandular Fever before that).

The main thing that has confused me about the possibility of XMRV is how I could've contracted it.

I read somewhere that XMRV orginated in mice, or is prevevant in mice. So my only plausible explanation is that my cat (who I used to torment, play with, and get scratched by) managed to get infected mouse blood on her claws and/or teeth, and then scratched/bit me (which happened many times).

I'm hoping to start a poll that asks people if they had a cat, or had contact with a cat around the time they first got sick.

It's obviously very un-scientific, but I would be very interested to see the results. I hope everyone is happy to respond if possible.
 

Min

Guest
Messages
1,387
Location
UK
No, I didn't have a cat, but I was a special needs teacher the 22 years ago when I became ill and some of the children from deprived homes had fleas, head lice etc. Some of them kept mice as pets.

I also have a diagnosis by private blood microscopy of chronic Lyme disease and co-infections, including cryptostrongylus pulmoni. The UK's medical authorities deny these exist & will not treat them. It's costing me a fortune.

Caught together with xmrv in the same blood sucking insect bite? What if such an insect now bites me and then someone else? Are my son and husband at risk of contracting aggressive prostate cancer in addition to M.E.?

so many unanswered questions ....whilst the UK medical authorities keep their heads in the sand and insist we are somatising.

The UK's M.E. Association is trying to fund xmrv research through its Ramsay Research Trust. Here it's always down to tiny charities to do the biomedical research.
 

Summer

Senior Member
Messages
175
We may never know ...

I do know that in the early days of the cluster outbreaks, they tried exhaustively to find out if there were any factor/s victims had in common, and the only thing they could ever come up with was that a high percentage had allergies. My own thought about that is it has to do with the genetic predisposition that must be present to be susceptible to this virus.

XMRV is a retrovirus, so looking at HIV in humans, that virus came from primates, but no one was/is asking HIV patients if they owned, or were ever around, a monkey.

After billions in HIV research, they are still not sure how HIV jumped species and got into the human population, and we may never know how XMRV did either.

Summer
 

hvs

Senior Member
Messages
292
XMRV will be found to be passed between related AND non related family members at a far, far higher rate than in the general population per _existing_ studies. The discovery of xmrv will help explain these numbers.

We don't need to look to mice because Ockham's Razor suggests that folks who didn't have intimate contact with carriers as adults got it from people in their households at some point in their lives. Those unknowing carriers simply didn't develop xand or prostate cancer. (But in the future, we might learn of other manifestations of x-related diseases.)

See
"Prevalence of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Chronic Fatigue Within Families of CFS Patients
Journal: Journal of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Volume: 13 Issue: 1,
Page Range: 3-13
 

Frank

Senior Member
Messages
850
Location
Europe
Even stroking cats could be enough for transmission. Cats like their coat and there you have it.

There are some studies cat- MEperson done and they found some interesting data. That a lot of people with ME came in contact with cats
 

kolowesi

Senior Member
Messages
267
Location
Central Texas
my cat got really sick

She was sick for 9 years before she died, and I had quite a bit of testing done on her.

The tests picked up high IgE's consistent with herpes viral infection, but they never found the viral bodies (can't remember the term, but some conglomeration of immune cells they see with herpes).

Later she developed chronic urinary tract infections. I had her on antibiotics for a long time, even shots every day. The antibiotics destroyed her hearing.

However, she lived to be 16+. I got sick a couple of years before she got sick, so it's more likely she caught something from me. Though I probably have Bartonella (cat scratch fever) as one of my stealth bacterial infections. Bartonella can supposedly turn off the immune response.

I heard something recently about toxoplasmosis, a parasite you can get from cat feces. I was tested at one point, and was negative for that one.

My cat stuck around in spite of being sick, and she was a great comfort to me. I keep my current kitty inside mostly, though she likes to go out a bit. It's probably best to keep them indoors.

Hope we all feel better. I agree, we'll probably never know how we got whatever it is that we have. It seems really important to protect the blood supply from XMRV, however. That needs to be done asap.

Best to all the cat patters!
Kelly
 

Alice Band

PWME - ME by Ramsay
Messages
175
Location
UK
Yes, I have often thought I got the disease from a sick cat I had contact with around the time I first fell ill.
 
Messages
78
I have always said that I got this from fleas.

In the late 70's I moved into an apt. in Mission Beach, Ca. that had shag rugs. The person who lived there before me had an animal that had fleas. I literally had hundreds of flea bites all over my legs. Some of the bites were a bright and shiny red. Soon after I got so sick with fatigue, and hundreds of floaters in my eyes (that were diagnosed as uveitis) that I had to move back home to N.J.

I was later diagnosed with CFS/FM, sarcoidosis, extremeley high antibodies to CMV, EBV,CMV, HHV-6, elevted B19 cells, and hypogammaglobulinanemia and more.

I recently got bitten by more fleas and it seems to have reactivated my fatigue amd cystoid macular edema. I also had mono as a teenager.
 

brenda

Senior Member
Messages
2,266
Location
UK
Cat fleas

This is interesting. My family moved into a renovated house where we found cat fleas, and after being bitten we called the local exterminator and they sprayed the whole place with pesticide. Foolishly we though that it was safe as we were not told to leave and later we all became sick with 'flu like symptoms.

I thought it was due to the pesticide especially as we all had lung problems but maybe it was the fleas that made us ill with a virus?

Brenda
 

Frank

Senior Member
Messages
850
Location
Europe
my cat died slowly from an unexplained disease, the vet called it 'cat aids'. At the same time i contracted CFS/ME.
 

MEKoan

Senior Member
Messages
2,630
I moved in with a man and his healthy (tyrannical) cat just weeks before I got sick.

Koan
 
Messages
78
Yes, like the Plague

which was transmitted by fleas. This disease comes from mice, but I think included in that category are rodents, i.e. rats, possums, racoons.

I recently got bitten by fleas again and it seems to have re-activated my extreme fatigue. I was dong well with IVIG but then a lot of flea bites, severe itching and then got sick again. I had a cornea transplant and it is now starting to reject.

I think the fleas that I was bitten by were from a racoon and a possum that got under the building that I'm living in. The fleas then got into the laundry room and when I washed my white sheets (white excites fleas and they attack anything white) they got on the sheets, I put the sheets on my bed and was getting bitten in bed.

I had no idea my itching was from fleas because there are no pets allowed in this building. One of my doctors thought the bites were yeast, again because there was no indication that I was around fleas.

Cats chase and eat mice. I read somewhere that fleas leave infected feces in the cats fur.
 

Martlet

Senior Member
Messages
1,837
Location
Near St Louis, MO
my cat died slowly from an unexplained disease, the vet called it 'cat aids'. At the same time i contracted CFS/ME.

I doubt there is a connection, to be honest. There is a feline version of AIDS but this cannot affect people.

Also, no-one knows how long ago the virus jumped from mice to humans. At first, I wondered if fleas were a vector, but then mice may not have been part of the transmission picture for decades, centuries even, which would make contact with them unnecessary now, just as you don't have to own a monkey to catch AIDS.

Of course, I am still left wondering how it can get from person to person if an exchange of bodily fluids is necessary. :confused:
 

hvs

Senior Member
Messages
292
Of course, I am still left wondering how it can get from person to person if an exchange of bodily fluids is necessary. :confused:

Mothers can pass it to fetuses; and the mothers never need to develop XAND or any other disease just because they carry xmrv.
 

Martlet

Senior Member
Messages
1,837
Location
Near St Louis, MO
Mothers can pass it to fetuses; and the mothers never need to develop XAND or any other disease just because they carry xmrv.

That would make sense in my case, I guess. My mother did not have CFS (she died young of a congenital heart problem) but my grandmother had "fibrositis," which I believe is what they called fibromyalgia. She also suffered with splitting headaches, sleep problems similar to mine and a host of other things that were diagnosed individually but which taken together look a lot like CFS. Her ailments started when she was widowed at the age of fifty. Mine began classically, with a viral infection. Both would fit with the notion of a trigger being necessary.
 

Frank

Senior Member
Messages
850
Location
Europe
Ok as a reaction i couldn't hold myself back to look up the study of ME-PET relation again. so here it is:

http://www.co-cure.org/infor14.htm

127 patients
97% had animal contact
83.5% reported that their animals had atypical diseases with symptoms which mimicked ME/CFS in humans
94.3% of the patients either were the primary caregiver for the animals
The group of 127 patients had a total of 463 domestic animals, of which 348 animals demonstrated abnormal signs and 115 were considered healthy.

(btw. my cat was never tested for anything)


I doubt there is a connection, to be honest. There is a feline version of AIDS but this cannot affect people.

Also, no-one knows how long ago the virus jumped from mice to humans. At first, I wondered if fleas were a vector, but then mice may not have been part of the transmission picture for decades, centuries even, which would make contact with them unnecessary now, just as you don't have to own a monkey to catch AIDS.

Of course, I am still left wondering how it can get from person to person if an exchange of bodily fluids is necessary. :confused:
 

Martlet

Senior Member
Messages
1,837
Location
Near St Louis, MO
I could go with fleas - or any vector that bites multiple times such as ticks (as opposed to mosquitoes that only need one blood meal) but I would be reluctant to "blame" any particular pet, such as cats or dogs. If the disease is in the human population, then transmission could feasibly be directly from human to human, via a blood-sucking vectors.