Monday, 23 August 2010

A second study,…

… published Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, confirm the presence of XMRV and other MRV-related viruses in a high proportion of chronic fatigue syndrome patients. Scientists found gene sequences from several MRV-related viruses in blood cells from 32 out of 37 chronic-fatigue patients but only 3 of 44 healthy ones.

Chronic Fatigue Linked to Virus Class
New York Times - 23 August 2010
When the journal Science published an attention-grabbing study last fall linking chronic fatigue syndrome to a recently discovered retrovirus, many experts remained skeptical — especially after four other studies found no such association.

Reference:

Detection of MLV-related virus gene sequences in blood of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome and healthy blood donors
Shyh-Ching Lo, Natalia Pripuzova, Bingjie Li, Anthony L. Komaroff, Guo-Chiuan Hung, Richard Wang, and Harvey J. Alter
PNAS published ahead of print August 23, 2010, doi:10.1073/pnas.1006901107


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Friday, 2 April 2010

One more step…

… towards a treatment of CFS?
Scientists at University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Emory University at Decatur, Georgia now report that several HIV drugs inhibit the replication of XMRV in cell cultures.

Here is the original report:
Raltegravir Is a Potent Inhibitor of XMRV, a Virus Implicated in Prostate Cancer and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Ila R. Singh, John E. Gorzynski, Daria Drobysheva, Leda Bassit, Raymond F. Schinazi
PLoS ONE 5(4): e9948. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009948

They write the following:
Principal Findings
Forty-five compounds, including twenty-eight drugs approved for use in humans, were evaluated against XMRV replication in vitro. We found that the retroviral integrase inhibitor, raltegravir, was potent and selective against XMRV at submicromolar concentrations, in MCF-7 and LNCaP cells, a breast cancer and prostate cancer cell line, respectively. Another integrase inhibitor, L-000870812, and two nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, zidovudine (ZDV), and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) also inhibited XMRV replication. When combined, these drugs displayed mostly synergistic effects against this virus, suggesting that combination therapy may delay or prevent the selection of resistant viruses.

You can also read more at:
Powerful HIV drugs inhibit retrovirus linked to prostate cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome
EurekAlert! 1-Apr-2010
Anti-HIV drugs inhibit emerging virus linked to prostate cancer and chronic fatigue syndrome
EurekAlert! 1-Apr-2010

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