Yesterday we have gone to Madrid to hear Dr. Dan Peterson’s lecture.
It was an all morning session about XMRV, and the first to talk was Dr. Dan Peterson. He shared with everybody some of the findings in XMRV (nothing new) with many references to Dr. Judy Mikovits and the WPI, and his slides were the same that Dr. Mikovits uses in her lectures. The reasons for leaving the WPI were more a personal decision in order to have more time for himself after 25 years of service. He seems to be having a nice rest and is very happy to have the time to go sailing again.
At some point It was mentioned by Daniel Peterson, that so far the best biomarker for CFS is the Low NKCell function test, and that if your budget was restricted, this would be the test to do, I guess He was referring to the same direction than Dr. Klimas is always talking about as well. http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0010817
The second lecture was from Dr. Kenny De Meirleir, very interesting, focused on the fact that the most important thing now is to have a simple and good XMRV Test for all the researchers. He assured that they already have the test and it works, and it is a matter of days that they will make it available, 3 to 4 weeks probably.
De Meirleir also talked about all the work that is being done and possible treatments. Dr. Marc Fremont’s lecture was very technical about this test, and finally, Dr. Chris Roelant talked about the urine test they already have, which indicates intestinal dysbiosis is present in these patients.
Some of the questions posted in the Conference were regarding the recent German study, and the fact that XMRV is 3 times more present in immune compromised patients already tells you that there is an immune problem on CFS patients where most of them have the retrovirus.
There are three pathways affected on CFS which affect muscles and CNS:
2-5A
PKR
NO
There are also 3 pats of the immune system affected:
Th1 Linked to viral reactivation and intracellular infection due to an excessive hypersensitivity
Th2 Linked to pathogens, allergies and inflammation and blood brain barrier dysfunction
Th17 Linked to autoimmunity and inflammation and blood brain barrier dysfunction
De Meirleir elaborated later on that Th2 imbalance that causes diseases such as CFS, Autism, HIV, MCS, Mercury exposure, Allergies, Parasites.
Th1 relates to cell-based immunity Th2 relates to Humoral immunity
You can see a bit on the conference in this link:
Daniel Peterson Q&A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywLnptBQLeg
Kenny de Meirleir Q&A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5buH30LcTds
When we asked Daniel Peterson to comment on Dr. Hubert lecture of last Monday in London, his answer was that Huber had positives 17 of the 19 samples that were sent to her, but She only spoke of the samples of other doctors who have tested negative. Daniel Peterson has said that once again we face the uncertainty of correctness in the samples tested, but also added that if She would have done a good job, She could not have all negatives, at least 3% would be positive, as we see is happening with the recent German study.
When we asked about the fact that HIV patients that are XMRV positive and have CFS, are not reacting to their current antiretroviral treatment, and that could lead to the possibility that XMRV is just a passenger virus in a depressed immune system, his answer was that actually that would be one possibility, and the other one is that they are taking the wrong drug, because XMRV is a different retrovirus, and they are being treated for HIV.
When we asked about the German study, and the fact that XMRV has been found now in the respiratory tract, and that could lead to new ways to detect XMRV different from the ones used in WPI, He said that is a big possibility. As we know blood is not the reservoir of XMRV, maybe the brain or the liver...
There were some other questions regarding the prevalence of CFS in children, banning blood donations, etc...
I will not add the whole Conference because is very time consuming, but I will review it and if I remember something relevant I will post in written expanding this current facebook note
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