Thursday, January 27, 2011

Sweet Peace

I'm 5 1/2 days into the no-sugar challenge my doctor has placed before me. It's not easy. But God is faithful and this was the devotional that He timed to pop up in my inbox today:
Nothing Tastes as Good as Peace Feels

Friday, January 21, 2011

XMRV and ME

I've been laying low and quiet lately, focusing on striving to heal and on my kids and their schooling. This has been a particularly rough week physically, after a severe allergic reaction to airborne latex last weekend. (Some kids blew up a few latex gloves at a science competition where my kids were also competing and I almost landed in the hospital after just being in the same room. Still recovering and fighting asthma and sever weakness as a result.)

Today's a big day in the blogging world as ME/CFS patients try to raise awareness about XMRV and the link to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Since I don't have the energy to post a unique post myself, I'm using a "cookie cutter" post that someone else has put a lot of time and energy into writing for me. If you are a long-time followers of this blog, a lot of the information may be review, thought there are a few links I don't think I've posted before. If you are new to InfertilityMom, here's a great basic overview of what the excitement about XMRV is all about. From a personal perspective of why this is all so important to me, here's the link to a poem I wrote last year.

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In 2009, Whittemore Peterson Institute scientists discovered a significant link between a newly-found retrovirus, xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV), and the neuroimmune disease, ME/CFS. Their ground-breaking discovery was published in the world-renowned journal Science, on 8th October, 2010.

http://www.wpinstitute.org/xmrv/docs/wpi_pressrel_100809.pdf

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5952/585.abstract?keytype=ref&siteid=sci&ijkey=m3wzKT4yJqEyk

This discovery brought renewed interest to the much-maligned disease and a flurry of research was conducted in order to confirm the link.

On August 23rd 2010, US government scientists validated the link, announcing they had found an association between a family of infectious murine leukaemia viruses and ME/CFS. They reported that 87% of those sampled carried at least one of the retroviruses, along with 7% (1 in 14) of the healthy controls.

http://www.rescindinc.org/fdanihpressconf.mp3

http://www.cfscentral.com/2010/08/fdanihharvard-xmrv-study-same-thing.html

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/08/16/1006901107.full.pdf+html

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/08/16/1007944107.full.pdf+html


XMRV is similar to HIV, the retrovirus that causes AIDS.

Following the validation study several countries banned ME/CFS patients from giving blood. In many cases these bans are for life.

For more information on XMRV and the Whittemore Peterson Institute, please visit the following site: http://www.wpinstitute.org/

If you would like to donate a regular, small amount to help push this research on, then please consider participating in the COUNT ME IN campaign. For more details visit: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=160913563956987