XMRV article from MERUK

October 16, 2009

Here is an article on XMRV from the UK ME research group MERUK where Dr Vance

Spence and co work.

There is a beauiful sentence which says it all:

" This is a stunning find — like a comet from a cloudless sky to patients across

the world. "

BW,

Sheila

XMRV and ME/CFS — A stunning find

The discovery of a potential retroviral link to ME/CFS, which is estimated to

affect some 17 million people worldwide, has certainly caught the world's

attention — no bad thing for an under-researched and often-overlooked illness!

..

What has caught the attention of the scientific world is that these observations

seem to fit neatly, at least at a first glance, with what is already known about

ME/CFS as a chronic illness. For example, viruses related to XMRV have been

reported to be involved in damage to blood vessels and nerves, and natural

killer cells (historically low in ME/CFS) are said to be susceptible to

infection by XMRV. Also, the fact that retroviruses like XMRV are known to be

able to activate some other (latent) viruses might explain why ME/CFS has been

associated with a range of different viral triggers, such as herpesviruses like

Epstein-Barr, over the years. Again, as Dr Judy Mikovits and colleagues point

out in their paper, some of the most commonly reported features of ME/CFS

include neurological symptoms and immune dysfunction with inflammatory cytokine

and chemokine upregulation, and some of these observations could be accounted

for by infectious XMRV in lymphocytes. The fact that such pieces seem to fit so

well together is suggestive only at this stage, however, and a virologist at

Tufts University was surely wise to say in New Scientist that while it's not

impossible that infection with this agent might cause a disease with

neurological and immunological consequences, we don't know for sure as yet.

{Moderator: Trimmed post. Well-written article. Will add to links page.

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