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XMRV in Spain News Item/Report From Spain

Cort

Phoenix Rising Founder
This is Cristina Montane's report from the XMRV workshop with Dr. Montoya and several Spanish Doctors. Thanks Cristina!

A new XMRV Workshop has taken place today in Vall Hebron Hospital in Barcelona. We have had five lectures, all of them full of the history of all the papers that have been published since Dr. Judy Mikovitss paper came out in September 2009. But each speaker has also given a summary of what are they working on.

Dr. Jos Alegre opened the session and was the first to speak. He is one of the most well known specialists in CFS, and as soon as the Science paper was published, he immediately tried to involve a group of Biologists from his Hospital in this research.

Then, Dr. Cecilia Cabrera from IrsiCaixa talked for an hour. She mentioned the great importance of Dr. Ila Singhs study with animals, and all they have learned about XMRV. Then she said that they have tested 11 patients and done 4 controls, that they have identified sequences of XMRV (not polytrophic virus) in B cells of CFS patients and controls, and that they are developing models of infection in human tissues in vitro, and in this way was able to study the viral pathogenity.

Dr. Jos Montoya of Stanford University was next. He started explaining that six years ago he met his first CFS patient, and since then he has visited more than 450. He is sure that you can develop CFS after a viral infection, and he believes that 11 % of patients that suffer EBV, Q fever, Ross River virus, etc, can end up with a CFS. About Dr. Judy Mikovits paper he remarked that since it was published everybody is turning to CFS with the intention to find out all they can because they have completely changed their opinion.

In a random, double-blind, placebo-controlled study they have found that there was a clinical improvement in patients who were taking valganciclovir for a period of more than six months, compared with placebo. CFS patients met Foukudas international criteria and had high antibody data against HHV-6 and EBV. Several immunological markers changed significantly in the treated patients that were not seen in patients taking placebo. This study will be submitted for publication this month, and provides evidence that CFS is a real illness that can be caused by an infectious agent that can be treated with prolonged antiviral intervention. They are also working on the hypothesis that besides the antiviral mechanism there could also be an immonumodulater component in the good results.


And the last to talk was Dr. Jordi Petriz, of the Vall Hebron Hospital. He told us that the aim of his research with Dr. Alegre has to do with the development of functional tests that help to find a better classification of subtypes of CFS. They will use citometric techniques (a very sophisticated technology) on the whole blood of people with CFS infected with XMRV, and compare the results with appropriate controls, in the hope of finding a pattern and goal differential characteristic of CFS. These techniques will also permit the analysis of the lymphocytes in the study of CFS patients immune system. He has also widely described the study that is focused on neutrophil oxidative metabolism and how this may affect their function.

Our conclusion is that all of them have mentioned the importance of an animal model to study the pathogenesis of XMRV. Its also very important to have accepted tools to work with, and this means the urgent need of a universal kit. They are all working in the same direction, they are sharing lots of data, samples, etc, and they all agreed with the great complicity between the different groups, which they had not observed so far, for the other diseases they have worked on. Good long term perspectives.
 

Stone

Senior Member
Messages
371
Location
NC
This is all very encouraging. Great news, and great to see it happening abroad.
 

Min

Guest
Messages
1,387
Location
UK
Spain finds XMRV in 70% of M.E. sufferers

http://www.abc.es/agencias/noticia.asp?noticia=574407

translation:

A virus may be related to chronic fatigue syndrome
(Catalonia) ENVIRONMENT-HEALTH HEALTH |> AREA: Public health
11.02.2010 / 14:30 h

Barcelona, November 2 (EFE) .- The XMRV virus may be related to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) to detect that 70% of patients may be infected, according to a study by researchers at the Hospital Vall d'Hebron in Barcelona presented today at a conference on this disease.

At the conference noted that the importance of the virus and the response that occurs when infected cell appears to be the key between the mechanisms that contribute to the onset of chronic fatigue syndrome.

CFS is an immunological disease that is diagnosed when they suffer more than six months of fatigue that invalidates the morning, exercise intolerance, restless sleep and cognitive dysfunction that affects the ability to concentrate in people who previously had an intellectual performance more remarkable.

It is estimated that 1% of the adult population between 25 and 50 years suffer from this syndrome, although the percentage is 2% if it's female population, especially between 35 and 40, and women with higher education, as explained by Dr. Jos Alegre, scientific coordinator of the day.

The Valley of Hebron is a referral center for this disease state and study some 1,500 people, of which 50 are children and 200 adolescents and young people between 16 and 23. EFE
 

free at last

Senior Member
Messages
697
Hi Min is this new ? are we being told of numbers of patients tested here, is it 1500 ? and where did the 70% get mentioned. also any idea what methods they used. hoping some one is going to tell this is exciting, after all hopefully it was tested in house, not VIDdx thats what we need.
 

Sasha

Fine, thank you
Messages
17,863
Location
UK
My intellectual performance was once more remarkable but I'm not sure if my mornings have been invalidated!
 

free at last

Senior Member
Messages
697
lol i think they have sasha, they can invalidate my mornngs anytime, i feel like crap every morning
 

Jemal

Senior Member
Messages
1,031
The numbers are definitely new, unfortunately there's not much information yet. Did they use VIPdx to get the blood tested?
 

caledonia

Senior Member
Wouldn't this be the confirmation study we've been waiting for?

In other words, the FDA/NIH study didn't quite confirm because they found cousin MLV's, not specifically XMRV.

But the Spanish have found XMRV, and in similar numbers to the WPI. And they studied a lot more people.
 

Cort

Phoenix Rising Founder
Its certainly good news. I think the impact the study makes depends on whether they used materials from the WPI or not. If they didn't then I would think the research community will embrace it more.

I don't think anything will be definitive, though, until the scientific community decides what is causing the disparate results. Until then we'll have a bunch of negative and positive studies and no consensus. I think what we're really waiting for is the BWG or some other authority to say - Aha - this is the where the problem was, and this is how you find the virus - leading to EVERY study being positive after that.

It certainly is good news, though, to get another positive study to match up against the negative ones. As time goes on we are getting more positive studies (while still getting negative ones) which is promising because the researchers are supposedly learning better how to find the bug. That provides hope that as time goes on we will get more positive studies.
 
Messages
13,774
There's not been much XMRV gossip recently.

I was hoping that some hints of the BWG's findings would slip out before they reported. There's been nothing that I've been able to detect.

Whenever there's a lack of positive news I seem to drift towards being more doubtful it will work out.
 

Cort

Phoenix Rising Founder
There's not been much XMRV gossip recently.

I was hoping that some hints of the BWG's findings would slip out before they reported. There's been nothing that I've been able to detect.

Whenever there's a lack of positive news I seem to drift towards being more doubtful it will work out.

I am the same way! Dr. LeGrice told me he thought 3 weeks before they figured one way or the other; contamination or sample preparation; that was Oct 12th he said that - which is about now :D...I guess they could decide that it was neither one - and there is something about the way they're looking for it.
 

eric_s

Senior Member
Messages
1,925
Location
Switzerland/Spain (Valencia)
It seems they're pretty good at controlling the information that gets out. In the weeks before the Alter/Lo study was published we had a similar situation, there was a lot of silence.

Good to hear Dr. Montoya is collaborating with Dr. Lipkin.
 

LJS

Luke
Messages
213
Location
East Coast, USA
So has the 70% data been published in a journal or was this data just presented at the conference? It means nothing to the scientific community until it is published.
 

Rita

Senior Member
Messages
235
The data of this spanish estudy were presented in abstract 5 and 7 in Bethesta, I remember
The study was only with 11-12 patients of one specialist and some controls.
I think is too much with this little quantity of pacients say that this % is real.
But XMRV is in Spain...
 

eric_s

Senior Member
Messages
1,925
Location
Switzerland/Spain (Valencia)
But what about those 1500 patients then? Was that only referring to the patients those doctors have been seeing in total?
And they found XMRV in controls too, but they only had 4. So they were a bit lucky, if you assume the prevalence is about 7%.