Sneaky Viruses causing CFS and SA?
Question:
>I have read elsewhere that perhaps 80% of the adult population gets infected >with one of the polio viruses eventually, but very, very few know it. >It seems to me that if some of these remain clinically undetected but >chronically unresolved, with mild but progressive deterioration of >neuromuscular control of breathing and limb movements, then that is >potentially relevant to neurological and neuromuscular disorders such as >sleep apnea, periodic limb movements in sleep, circadian phase disorders, >parasomnias, and so forth. >Zzzorro……….
Thanks for the post, Zorrooo. It raises some chilling questions. First of all, what is the definitive test? It was mentioned in the piece, but where can it be done? Who would be more prone to do such a test: your family practicioner or Dr. Martin? Does not this data suggest some correlations with Dr. M’s assertions — namely, viral transmissions for polio vaccinations, which include weakened strains of polio pathogens? But here is the biggest question to me. There appears to be some damning evidence that viruses cause fatigue disorders. Now where do we turn for help? Who will mobilize on our behalf to get to the truth? I don’t believe that any physician I have ever encountered in front of my eyes would even know where to start, let alone want to. Which of your physicians could slap you in a chair, take your blood, test you for the virus, and send you on your way? Where is the local "CFS/Viral" clinic in your state? Why will this truth be so hard to get at? Will there be any obstacles to the easy assimilation of this information into mainstream medicine? If so, why the hell come? Do traditional physicians have anything to lose by receiving and acknowledging viral etiologies in fatigue disorders? What could they possiblly lose? If there are many of these viruses, what provisional name might you give to them all if you had a passing interest in their ultimate categorization? Who is our only hope? Doug
Response:
Attn: Mr. Doug and Mr. T: From: Zorro I can’t stand the bickering over Dr. Martin’s stealth virus, when there seem to be many more scientifically productive (if not proven) approaches unfolding out there. Dr. Martin’s work will have to stand on its own wobbly legs. No amount of benevolent rationalizing will help it. His hypothesis eventually will be confirmed or disproved by critical data from skeptical scientific inquiry, as with all scientific conjecture, and that will govern its ultimate disposition. Meanwhile, there are other hypotheses that are coming together much more strongly, and should deserve at least equal time. At the current level of knowledge, the common enteroviruses should seem much more likely to be relevant to CFS, and could better be described as "stealth" (or at least, sneaky) viruses. Remember that the diagnosis of CFS is exclusionary (must exclude all other causes of chronic fatigue). So if enteroviruses cause sub-clinical polio (dysfunction of neuromuscular breathing function) which manifests itself as CFS which causes sleep apnea which in turn presents clinical chronic fatigue, then the CFS cannot be diagnosed as CFS, and instead sleep apnea with apneic fatigue is the mandated diagnosis. Consider the following: **************************************** Colby, J. "ME: The New Plague" (First and Best in Education Ltd., 24 Nene Valley Business Park, Oundle, Peterborough, PE 8 4HL, UK) ———————————————- Excerpt published in [What Doctor's Don't Tell You], Vol. 6, No. 9. "Chronic Fatigue: A polio by another name" by J. Colby ———————————————- Subtitle: Research into Post-Polio syndrome and chronic fatigue has-made the astounding discovery that the virus that most often triggers CFS is closely related to the one that causes polio. …..a body of evidence is growing linking Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), also called Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), to this terrible disease, largely caused by attempts to eradicate polio. An alternative polio seems to be upon us. The proceedings of the first international scientific conference…..includes 50 papers written by 118 contributors from a wide range of specialties, including clinical neurology……In particular, papers…..compare Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Post-Polio Syndrome…..Clinically, it is indistinguishable from CFS. Other researchers demonstrate that CFS is just another form of polio, which has increased with the advent of polio vaccination. As one type of gut virus has been eradicated, so other forms have had the space to proliferate…..A historical accident has led to various names being given to viruses, all of which share physical, chemical and epidemiological characteristics of what we consider the classic polio virus, which science refers to as polio viruses 1, 2, and 3…..In l948, a polio-like illness in New York state prompted scientists to culture the virus. But what grew looked to them at that time like a new virus. They called it "Coxsackie" after the small town up the Hudson River where it was found. And they called the disease "Atypical Polio" because its symptoms identified it as a kind of polio, despite the virus being apparently different. This kind of polio, "Atypical Polio,’ has since been renamed, ‘Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,’ or ME. But it remains a kind of poIio despite the change of name. and newer technology has shown up the generic similarities of the most frequent agent that causes it. These techniques place Coxsackie, the virus most often implicated in CFS, in the polio family tree, along with so-called echo viruses. Coxsackie has been further divided into Coxsackie type A (with 24 viruses) and Coxsackie type B (six viruses ). There are 34 echo viruses. In total, there are at least 72 enteroviruses in all, with new ones still being discovered. All this has been unnecessarily confusing and complicated, even for doctors. These days newly discovered enteroviruses are just given a new number, not a new name…..Had the techniques been available that we now have at our disposal, all these viruses might simply have been called "Polio 1 through 72"…..Dr. Elizabeth Dowsett, consultant microbiologist of the Southeast Essex NHS Trust who is in the forefront of British CFS research, explains that true CFS (as opposed to fatigue states with other etiologies) …..has often been diagnosed as a "non-paralytic polio"…..She feels that it has been an unfortunate mistake to turn to the label "Chronic Fatigue" because true CFS is a neurological condition that usually originates with a gut virus infection like Coxsackie…..The requirement to put off diagnosing CFS for six months after the patient falls ill has unwittingly militated against this. If tests are not done very rapidly after the onset of infection, it is too late to identify the virus……A blood screening test called the IGM, which shows up recent infection, can be positive up to three months after infection in adults. As the enteroviruses are characterized by their relapsing nature…..it could also be identified on relapse. Apart from modern techniques, a research procedure called the acid elution test can identify your antibody from a circulating virus…..Years ago it was difficult to diagnose polio, and it was this very test which was used. A third way to compare CFS with polio is by looking at studies of actual outbreaks which identified the viruses causing it. Here the evidence is particularly striking. A recent paper by Richard T. Johnson…..sets out evidence that has been available since the 1950s. "In the spring of 1957," he wrote, "we investigated an epidemic of poliomyelitis in Hawaii…of the 39 cases of nonparalytic poliomyelitis, only four were related to type I poliovirus. There were 16 cases of echovirus 9, seven cases of Coxsackie, and four to five other enteroviruses." The very enteroviruses known to be implicated in CFS were here identified as causing "non-paralytic polio." CFS has often been diagnosed as "non-paralytic polio." And even more interestingly, two of the 38 cases of paralytic disease were not caused by the polio virus at all, but by one of the Coxsackie viruses. So we know that enteroviruses in general can cause varying forms of the disease we call polio. Other parallels between CFS and polio concern neurological damage. In the November 1991 edition of Orthopedics, Dr. Bruno says that "all the evidence available shows conclusively that every case of poliomyelitis, human or experimental, exhibits lesions of the brain"…..CFS has been diagnosed by both italicized names. In fact, brain abnormalities can now be demonstrated in the brains of people with CFS using SPECT and MRI scans. One would expect there to be differences in the diseases caused by different viruses, but if these viruses are all of the same family and use the same receptor sites in the body, one would also expect there to be similarities. This is just what we find. Dr. Bruno says: "Despite the differences between poliomyelitis and CFS, an association with the polio virus was suggested by the fact that, of the more than one dozen CFS outbreaks before the introduction of the Salk vaccine, nine occurred during or immediately after outbreaks of polio, and several involved hospital staff who cared for polio patients" (Annals, NY Academy of Sciences, 1995). There is also the case of a woman who fell ill with classical CFS while nursing a lady friend with acute paralytic polio (Hyde et al., 1994). But if CFS is a type of polio, why doesn’t everyone exposed to the relevant viruses develop ME just as they did polio? …..Dr. Thomas Stuttaford of The London Times explains, ". . only a small number of those infected with the polio virus became paralyzed; about 90 percent didn’t even realize that they had anything more threatening than a cold." With polio and CFS, the state of your immune system governs whether you will be susceptible. By _(vaccinations)_ we alter the balance of infectious agents in the environment. The circulation of wild polio viruses 1-3 has declined through vaccination. However, this has left us open to the other 69 polio-related viruses, which have thrived……It is therefore not surprising that since the late 1950s the incidence of CFS has risen, and experts predict that it will be the neurological disease of the 21st century. By suppressing the spread of three enteroviruses we have opened the door to the rest. The argument about whether enterovirus infection persists over many years is still raging. In her 1995 review…..Dr. Dowsett draws attention to new evidence of persistent enterovirus infection in the CNS….."Three separate groups of Virologists from the US, UK and France have found fragments of enteroviral RNA in the spinal cord, cerebrospinal fluid and blood of some patients with Post-Polio syndrome. The fragments are identified as polio virus by some and as Coxsackie virus by others"…..It is thought that the emergence of late-onset Post-Polio fatigue may result from age-related changes in brain cells that survived the original polio infection (Bruno, Annals, NY Academy of Sciences, 1995). But it can be observed through case histories that just as we see Post-Polio Syndrome 30 years after initial infection, so we are seeing "Post-CFS" as well. The Nightingale Research Foundation in Ottawa proposes that in fact they are one and the same condition-others believe they may be variations of each other. What has arisen is "two new diseases with different names, with different degrees of acceptance and exactly the same set of symptoms at exactly the same time. It is unrealistic to believe that we are dealing with two different disease processes and two different causes," the researchers concluded. A paper investigating the epidemiological aspects of CFS has revealed further convincing parallels between the behavior of this disease and polio. It describes the onset … read more »
