PH has posted as the top sticky, at least today, part of Dr. Bell's comments on the discovery of the XMRV virus in so many CFIDS pts...
here's the part re the link to lyme:
Personal Comment: XMRV as "The Puppet-master Virus"
Is CFS a single illness or a heterogeneous collection of fatigue-causing illnesses? This question has been important for 25 years and needs to be addressed at the beginning of the XMRV era. In some senses all illnesses are "heterogeneous". There is the viral agent and there is the host. No two hosts are identical, and even identical twins have "epigenetic" differences. Therefore it is inevitable that phenotypes (the way an illness appears in a person) may vary. Poliovirus is a good example. One agent causes a mild flu-like infection in one person and paralysis in another. But polio should not be thought of as a heterogeneous illness.
XMRV may "cause" CFS because it allows other agents, (EBV, Lyme, enteroviruses, etc) to be expressed differently. After all, XMRV is a retrovirus, and look at the variations in phenotype in other known human retroviruses. The lymphocytes expressing XMRV were "activated" implying that this agent was not just quietly lurking in cells as some agents do.
The "Two Hit" Theory has been circulating for twenty years. One hit is an immune altering silent hit, and the second is a herpes virus or some other agent. Actually herpes viruses can carry retroviruses along, so here is more work for the Whittemore-Peterson Institute to do. John Coffin wrote "One New Virus-How many Old Diseases?"(4)
I would think of XMRV as the "puppet-master". It is known to be linked to prostate cancer; it lurks in the shadows and pulls certain strings causing cells to become malignant. Perhaps it pulls another string to cause EBV to be more active, or Lyme, or enterovirus? Another string to alter RNAse L? Many, many questions open up. "
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time will tell of course; it would be interesting to have Lyme pts tested for this as well and see what the percentages are.
all the best,
Victoria
