Dr. Peterson XMRV Testimony

Yesterday my doctor (the local one whom I consider to be my personal specalist, even though insurance won't cover him) was in Washington, D.C. to testify about XMRV before The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Advisory Committee (CFSAC), the advisory board who provides recommendations to the Secretary of Health and Human Services via the Assistant Secretary for Health of the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services! You can watch and listen to portions of his amazing testimony below or find out more information from the US Department of Health and Human Services.

For those new to my blog and wondering what I'm talking about, here are some quotes taken directly from the Whittemore Peterson Institute's website on XMRV:

The spectrum of neuro-immune diseases including: Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS), Atypical MS, Fibromyalgia and Gulf War Syndrome, share common abnormalities in the innate immune response which result in chronic immune activation and immune deficiency.

We have detected the retroviral infection XMRV is greater than 95% of the more than 200 ME/CFS, Fibromylagia, Atypical MS patients tested. The current working hypothesis is that XMRV infection of B, T, NK and other cells of the innate immune response causes the chronic inflammation and immune deficiency resulting in an inability to mount an effective immune response to opportunistic infections. (See XMRV paper in Science.)

This discovery opens an entire new avenue of Neuro-Immune Disease related research and our discovery has brought to this field world-renown immunologists and retrovirologists building our team of collaborators to translate our discoveries into new treatments as soon as possible.

Because retroviruses are known to cause inflammatory diseases, neurological disease immune deficiency and cancer the discovery of XMRV has far reaching implications for the prevention and treatment of not only lymphoma, one of the potentially devastating complications of ME/CFS but prostate cancer and perhaps many others.