Daily Mail

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this the cure for ME?

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By JEROME BURNE, Daily Mail 11:33am 16th May 2006

A drug used to treat herpes infections has produced a dramatic

improvement in

patients severely affected by ME, or fatigue syndrome.

Sufferers who for years had been unable to leave their homes now

report being

able to resume normal life.

This is a remarkable result for a treatment for this complex and

controversial

disorder that is thought to affect as many as 240,000 people in

Britain and for

which there is no cure.

The results, reported at a scientific conference earlier this month

by Professor

Montoya of Stanford University in California, involved 12

patients who had

been given the powerful drug valganciclovir, which targets the human

herpes

virus (HHV-6). Nine of the patients experienced a great improvement.

One of Montoya's cases was onetime champion figure skater Donna

Flowers, now

aged 50 and working as a physiotherapist, who lives in California's

Silicon

Valley.

" Two years ago, I was spending 14 hours a day in bed and my brain was

so fogged

I couldn't write a letter, " she says.

" I wasn't functioning at all. I'd been diagnosed with chronic

fatigue, but the

doctors didn't have anything to offer. I had to employ a full-time

nanny just to

look after my three-year-old twins. "

However, she is now back at work, treating young Olympic hopefuls,

the nanny has

gone and she's just started ballet lessons.

'Soaring energy levels'

" When Donna came to see us, her energy levels were around 10 per cent

of what

she considered normal,' says Montoya. " Today, she is functioning at

90 per

cent. "

One patient who could barely walk around the block is now cycling

three hours a

day, while another who could not even get down the stairs to

breakfast is now up

every day at 7am.

The professor reported his findings at a conference on the HHV-6

virus, which

was held in Barcelona earlier this month.

While it's well known that some patients with CFS have signs of

various viral

infections, this is the first time that treating one of the viruses

has been

shown to be so effective.

" I was amazed by the results, " says Montoya, who runs the infectious

diseases

clinic at Stanford. " Donna was sent to me because high levels of

another virus

(Epstein Barr) had been detected in her system.

" I found high levels of HHV-6 virus as well, so I treated her with

valganciclovir to bring down her viral load.

" I'd hoped it might help a bit, but I didn't expect the results to be

anything

like as dramatic. It was pure serendipity. "

'Careful monitoring'

Valganciclovir is licensed to treat HHV-6 infections of the eye,

which can

affect transplant or cancer patients with severely weakened immune

systems.

HHV-6 is not the same as the herpes virus responsible for cold sores.

Most

commonly, it causes roseola infantum in children, who get a fever and

a rash.

" I have treated hundreds of immune compromised patients with the

drug, so I am

very familiar with it, " says Montoya. " It can have serious side-

effects

including anaemia, so you have to monitor patients very carefully.

But so far

none of the CFS/ ME patients have reacted badly to it. "

All the experts agree that a lot more research will have to be done

before

valganciclovir can be widely used as a treatment.

" There is a long history of linking CFS/ME with some sort of viral

infection, "

says Shepherd, a medical advisor to the charity Action For ME.

" About 75 per cent of cases begin with an infection which the patient

never

properly recovers from, so it is quite likely infectious agents lurk

in the

body. While the role of HHV-6 is certainly plausible, we will have to

wait for a

larger trial that is properly controlled. "

Montoya agrees: " These were individual cases and it is always

possible the

results were due to a effect, " he says.

However, that is unlikely because we saw a worsening of each

patient's condition

around week three to four of the treatment, probably when infected

cells were

dying off. After that came the improvement.

" That is not a pattern you get with placebos. But we don't know yet

why the drug

makes such a difference. "

The possibility that valganci-clovir could eventually provide an

effective

treatment for some cases of CFS is just part of a wider picture. Over

the past

year, genetic research has provided a new understanding of the

disease that

could eventually lead to new therapies.

For years, the conventional view has been that there is no known

cause, no way

to diagnose it and no effective treatment.

Some doctors and health workers believe it is the result of social and

psychological factors - and best treated with psychotherapy and

exercise.

Now it is becoming clear these patients have " a disturbance in their

body's

natural way of dealing with infection, " says Malcolm Hooper, Emeritus

Professor

of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Sunderland.

" Anti-viral drugs such as valganciclovir may be allowing it to re-set

itself. "

Hooper was one of the speakers at a conference in London for ME

Awareness Day on

Friday. Another speaker was Dr Kerr of St 's Medical

School in

London, who recently published groundbreaking work on the links

between genes

and CFS/ME.

" We've found that the genes in patients' white blood cells - a key

part of the

immune system - are switched on and off in an abnormal fashion, " he

says.

The hope is that a relatively old drug, called interferon beta, can

help to

restore the balance. A controlled trial is planned.

What researchers such as Kerr find disheartening is that there seems

to be

little official support for this biological-based research in

Britain. The bulk

of the funding has gone to the psychological approach.

But many hope a parliamentary inquiry looking at the progress of

CFS/ME research

will find that research involving genes, viruses and the immune

system would

benefit patients.