Dr. Eric Klein, chair of the Glickman Urological and Kidney Institute at the Cleveland Clinic and co-author of the first study linking prostate cancer to the retrovirus XMRV, recently gave an excellent 17-minute lecture on the retrovirus XMRV entitled, "Is prostate cancer an infectious disease?" The lecture covered ME/CFS as well. At about eight minutes into his talk, Klein says:
"We think XMRV probably infects everybody, but it persists in those who are deficient in their antiviral defenses."
"What I meant was that
anyone, regardless of the structure of their RNaseL gene [which helps fight viruses], can be
infected. Initially we thought only those who have a specific mutation
in that gene were susceptible to infection. I did not mean to imply that the whole population is infected; it is
likely that they are not. Current studies suggest that 3 [percent] to 7 percent of control
patients (non-prostate cancer and non-CFS) have evidence of prior
infection as determined by the presence of antibodies to XMRV in their
blood."
Here's the link to Klein's lecture, though there seems to be a glitch in that the audio is sometimes in Spanish--even when you choose English:
http://webcasts.prous.com/AUA2010/html/1-en/template.aspx?section=7&p=7,11872#
A two-minute segment with Dr. Eric Klein and Dr. Robert Silverman (coauthor of the first study linking XMRV to prostate cancer):
A two-minute segment with Dr. Eric Klein and Dr. Robert Silverman (coauthor of the first study linking XMRV to prostate cancer):
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Thank you, Mindy. This answers the question most people watching Dr. Klein's presentation were asking. As always, you are providing us with the information we most want and need.
ReplyDeletePatricia Carter
www.mecfsforums.com
Mindy,
ReplyDeleteThank you. I don't know if the host site addressed the issue but I had no problems with the audio for the entire 17 minutes of the presentation.
Interesting information in the presentation about early (1 month) and late (5 months) targets of XMRV infection in non-human primates. Early targets included peripheral blood (CD4+), bone marrow and prostate epithelial cells where as late targets differed in that peripheral blood and bone marrow were not targets and only the prostate stromal cells were targets.
Dr. Klein also talks about the importance of PCR techniques, novel strains of XMRV, and differences in geographic distribution that may be leading to a failure to find XMRV in some studies.
He also mentions that there were 22 XMRV papers or presentations at the recent Cold Spring Harbor conference and that XMRV is definitely a real pathogen. Combine this with today's blood safety meeting and it appears as though the major players in XMRV research may be coming to some consensus on some of the key factors such as methodology and possibility of differing strains.
Boy did Dr. Klein's lecture just zip right along! Hardly had a chance to catch my breath. (I also had no problems with the audio)
ReplyDeletemindy, you are such a treasure to cfs patients trying to get to the bottom of all this! - rrrr
ReplyDeleteIm not sure but I think this may be the same lecture given by Dr Klein. Audio appears to good.
ReplyDeleteFound on the natmedtalk.com site.
http://tinyurl.com/3alpyvp
My elephant-in-the-room question is "What does prostate cancer have to do with ME/CFS?" The XMRV base-pairs in the diseases are 99.9% similar, yet the two diseases are so different. There may be an additional factor involved here.
ReplyDeletethanks mindy for not posting my prior comments...appreciated and not to worry i am off your site for good....
ReplyDelete