XMRV Workshop

XMRV

A new XMRV Workshop has taken place 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 Mikovits’s paper came out in September 2009. But each speaker has also given a summary of what are they working on.

Dr. José 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 Singh’s 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. José 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 Mikovit’s 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 Foukuda’s 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 immonumodulator 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 cytometric 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 patient’s immune system. He has also widely described the study that is focused on neutrophil oxidative metabolism and how this may affect their function.

In conclusion, all of them have mentioned the importance of an animal model to study the pathogenesis of XMRV. It’s 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.