Theydenovirus

Some interesting news about using adenovirus to deliver HIV (and other) vaccines. Seems not to work:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125840220390050981.html

cheers,

rohan

XMRV link with CFS!!!!!

Pooja Bakhai:

I remember when Professor Seigel told us that we are just beginning to understand the viral basis for cancer and other diseases...that we have yet to realize the true power, influence, and versatility of viruses.

In this article, XMRV is found to be linked to CFS, a syndrome many people often disregard as "not a real disease." Upon reading the title, I was incredibly excited/shocked/astounded because this finding strangely (?) connects to my life, thoughts, and recent research in NUMEROUS ways:

1) I just began working in a lab that researches Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and they have found a viral basis for the disease as well! When I initially read the title of this article, I thought it was a finding from the Stanford lab, but it was a different lab AND a different viral basis!!!!! The viral basis found in the Stanford lab was the Epstein-Barr virus as well as another virus that I can't currently recall...
2) Furthermore, the virus found in CFS patients in the study below is the XMRV virus--does it ring a bell?! It should, because we just discussed it last week with respect to its link to prostate cancer! Unbelievable.

We are just beginning to scratch the surface of the true depth, complexity, and widespread nature of the viral world. Recent research (and by this I mean in the last 5 years or so) has found an increasing number of links between viruses and disease, viruses and cancer, viruses and...life. With greater understanding comes endless questions--and this is describes exactly how I felt as I read the article below. The last sentence of the article says it all: "This is going to create an avalanche of subsequent studies."

Virus Is Found in Many With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

By DENISE GRADY

Many people with chronic fatigue syndrome are infected with a little known virus that may cause or at least contribute to their illness, researchers are reporting.

The syndrome, which causes prolonged and severe fatigue, body aches and other symptoms, has long been a mystery ailment, and patients have sometimes been suspected of malingering or having psychiatric problems rather than genuine physical ones. Worldwide, 17 million people have the syndrome, including at least one million Americans.

An article published online Thursday in the journal Science reports that 68 of 101 patients with the syndrome, or 67 percent, were infected with an infectious virus, xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus, or XMRV. By contrast, only 3.7 percent of 218 healthy people were infected. Continuing work after the paper was published has found the virus in nearly 98 percent of about 300 patients with the syndrome, said Dr. Judy A. Mikovits, the lead author of the paper.

XMRV is a retrovirus, a member of the same family of viruses as the AIDS virus. These viruses carry their genetic information in RNA rather than DNA, and they insert themselves into their hosts’ genetic material and stay for life.

Dr. Mikovits and other scientists cautioned that they had not yet proved that the virus causes the syndrome. In theory, people with the syndrome may have some other, underlying health problem that makes them prone to being infected by the virus, which could be just a bystander. More studies are needed to explain the connection.

But Dr. Mikovits said she thought the virus would turn out to be the cause, not just of chronic fatigue, but of other illnesses as well. Previous studies have found it in cells taken from prostate cancers.

“I think this establishes what had always been considered a psychiatric disease as an infectious disease,” said Dr. Mikovits, who is research director at the Whittemore Peterson Institute in Reno, a nonprofit center created by the parents of a woman who has a severe case of the syndrome. Her co-authors include scientists from the National Cancer Institute and the Cleveland Clinic.

Dr. Mikovits said she and her colleagues were drawing up plans to test antiretroviral drugs — some of the same ones used to treat HIV infection — to see whether they could help patients with chronic fatigue. If the drugs work, that will help prove that the virus is causing the illness. She said patients and doctors should wait for the studies to be finished before trying the drugs.

Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University, said the discovery was exciting and made sense.

“My first reaction is, ‘At last,’ ” Dr. Schaffner said. “In interacting with patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, you get the distinct impression that there’s got to be something there.”

He said the illness is intensely frustrating to doctors because it is not understood, there is no effective treatment and many patients are sick for a long time.

He added, “This is going to create an avalanche of subsequent studies.”

With the new vaccine on its way....

Interesting take on how vaccines may change long-held attitudes (or how they should)-


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/health/views/29essa.html?_r=1&ref=health&pagewanted=print

Pregnancy Is No Time to Refuse a Flu Shot
By ANNE DRAPKIN LYERLY, MARGARET OLIVIA LITTLE and RUTH R. FADEN

This article is by Anne Drapkin Lyerly, Margaret Olivia Little and Ruth R. Faden.

Pregnant women are deluged with advice about things to avoid: caffeine, paint, soft cheese, sushi. Even when evidence of possible harm is weak or purely theoretical, the overriding caveat is, “Don’t take it, don’t use it, don’t do it.”

In a few contexts, the admonition is warranted; in most, it is merely inconvenient and anxiety provoking. But in the case of pandemic influenza, it may be deadly. With the second wave of swine flu at hand, and up to 50 percent of the public at risk, the usual mode of thinking about pregnancy and medications threatens to make a worrisome situation worse.

The dangers of this mentality became frighteningly apparent this summer, when a study in The Lancet reported strikingly high rates of death and of complications like pneumonia in pregnant women with H1N1 influenza. Pregnancy meant a fourfold risk of hospitalization, sometimes with a tragic outcome; all the pregnant women who died had been relatively healthy to begin with.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have since put pregnant women at the top of the priority list for the vaccine, and have recommended that pregnant women start antiviral medications as soon as possible after exposure to the virus and after the onset of flu symptoms.

But if experience is any indication, even these forceful recommendations may not be enough to overcome reluctance among pregnant women and those who care for them. Even though the seasonal flu vaccine is recommended for pregnant women in particular, in one study only 15 percent received the vaccine — a rate far lower than any adult group for whom it is recommended.

And despite recommendations that antiviral drugs be started as soon as flu symptoms appear, many pregnant women in the Lancet study were not treated soon enough. Delays ranged from 6 to 15 days from the time that symptoms started, and 2 to 14 days from the time the women were seen by a doctor. Not one of the six pregnant and relatively healthy women who died received medication within 48 hours of the onset of her illness.

This is a sadly familiar pattern. After the thalidomide disaster of 1960s, and the very real concerns it raised about the impact of drugs on fetal development, many ended up viewing the use of any medicine by pregnant women as anathema. As a result, doctors and women alike often eschew or discontinue medications for serious illnesses, even when the harms of untreated disease, for women and the children they bear, are worse than any risks of medication.

Poorly treated asthma during pregnancy, for example, is associated with higher rates of pregnancy complications for women, as well as growth problems in the fetus and premature delivery. By contrast, women whose asthma is controlled with medication do as well as women without asthma, and so do their babies. Untreated diabetes early in pregnancy elevates the chances of severe birth defects to as high as 1 in 4.

And yet even when the evidence is clear, pregnant women find it hard to fight against the “don’t take it, don’t use it, don’t do it” mentality, which focuses our minds and emotions only on the risks of taking a drug. Obscured from view are the risks of the disease itself.

Overcoming this mindset will take work on several fronts. Every effort needs to be made to alert pregnant women and clinicians about the special risks of H1N1 in pregnancy. Educational efforts need to be honest about the reasoning behind these important recommendations, including both the limits of what we know and the reasons that concern for pregnant women is now so great.

But the key to success, now and in the future, will be the conduct of research that is specific to the needs of pregnant women. Concerns about the ethics of research involving these women mean that we know far less about how to treat or prevent disease during pregnancy than for other adults and children. The urgent threat of H1N1 flu has brought into sharp relief the fact that pregnant women can and should be protected through research, not from it.

Studies enrolling pregnant women in trials of vaccines for swine flu, financed by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, are now under way at six major medical centers. Researchers are also studying ways to guide the use of antiviral drugs to suit pregnant women’s changed metabolisms. Experts suggest that studying blood samples from as few as two dozen women is all we need to determine whether the standard adult dose of antivirals is effective for treatment or protection during pregnancy.

If there was ever a time to rewrite the playbook on how to think about drugs, vaccines and pregnancy, this is it. The lives of women and babies depend on it.

New Strain of HIV Discovered

New HIV strain discovered in woman from Cameroon

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID (AP) – 19 hours ago

WASHINGTON — A new strain of the virus that causes AIDS has been discovered in a woman from the African nation of Cameroon. It differs from the three known strains of human immunodeficiency virus and appears to be closely related to a form of simian virus recently discovered in wild gorillas, researchers report in Monday's edition of the journal Nature Medicine.

The finding "highlights the continuing need to watch closely for the emergence for new HIV variants, particularly in western central Africa," said the researchers, led by Jean-Christophe Plantier of the University of Rouen, France.

The three previously known HIV strains are related to the simian virus that occurs in chimpanzees.

The most likely explanation for the new find is gorilla-to-human transmission, Plantier's team said. But they added they cannot rule out the possibility that the new strain started in chimpanzees and moved into gorillas and then humans, or moved directly from chimpanzees to both gorillas and humans.

The 62-year-old patient tested positive for HIV in 2004, shortly after moving to Paris from Cameroon, according to the researchers. She had lived near Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, but said she had no contact with apes or bush meat, a name often given to meat from wild animals in tropical countries.

The woman currently shows no signs of AIDS and remains untreated, though she still carries the virus, the researchers said.

How widespread this strain is remains to be determined. Researchers said it could be circulating unnoticed in Cameroon or elsewhere. The virus' rapid replication indicates that it is adapted to human cells, the researchers reported.

Their research was supported by the French Health Watch Institute, the French National Agency for Research on AIDS and Viral Hepatitis and Rouen University Hospital.

A separate paper, also in Nature Medicine, reports that people with genital herpes remain at increased risk of HIV infection even after the herpes sores have healed and the skin appears normal.

Researchers led by Drs. Lawrence Corey and Jia Zhu of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center found that long after the areas where the herpes sores existed seem to be clear, they still have immune-cell activity that can encourage HIV infection.

Herpes is marked by recurring outbreaks and has been associated with higher rates of infection with HIV. It had been thought that the breaks in the skin were the reason for higher HIV rates, but a study last year found that treatment of herpes with drugs did not reduce the HIV risk.

The researchers tested the skin of herpes patients for several weeks after their sores had healed and found that, compared with other genital skin, from twice to 37 times more immune cells remained at the locations where the sores had been.

HIV targets immune cells and in laboratory tests the virus reproduced three to five times faster in tissue from the healed sites as in tissue from other areas.

"Understanding that even treated (herpes) infections provide a cellular environment conducive to HIV infection suggests new directions for HIV prevention research," commented Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.

That study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Tietze Foundation.

-Nick

An interesting stance on the flu shot by a UW professor

Click for article

Nick

Because it's never too late...

One step closer to understanding adenoviral oncogenesis...

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/321/5892/1084

Hope you are all having a good summer!

Raquel

Mamavirus and Sputnik

Awesome stuff about the new giant virus they found in a Paris water cooling tower, called "Mamavirus" since it's even bigger than Mimi. Don't go nuts Dave.

Also, more info on "Sputnik" the virus that was found inside of it - apparently it causes mamavirus to "get sick", making misformed capsids, etc. Read here. So cool!

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080806/full/454677a.html

Jon