21.02.2010
Noticias recientes sobre el XRMV
Información facilitada por Clara Valverde, de la Lliga SFC
Retrovirologists Speak - We have video from retrovirologists at the 17th Retroviruses and Opportunistics Infections in San Francisco talking about XMRV. Dr. Goff reflected on how easy it is to grow XMRV in the right cell types - an important finding because that allows researchers to intimately study the virus. The fact that the virus is easy to grow in hormone sensitive cells is important because those are the types of cells that the virus will probably be found most readily in the body. (This apparently suggests that immune cells will not be the main reservoir; ie the main locus replication in the body, and it, of course, fits with the finding of the virus in prostate tissues).
The next speaker's short presentation suggested that the research community is vigorously going after this virus. Her work involved Emory University in Cleveland Clinic (CC collaborated with WPI on the Science paper). It's very exciting work. The NIH has talked about the need for an animal model of CFS for many years; this is essentially an animal they can give CFS to and then study it in detail to try unravel what's going. They've ever done a darn thing about it - no surprise there - but the Japanese are using a rodent model to study this disease. Rodents are cheap and easy to work with but this group is already using a primate (rhesus monkeys). Primates, of course, share many more characteristics with humans than monkeys do and they're also much, much more expensive. The fact that this Emory University researcher is already using primates suggests they're quite serious about XMRV.
They're looking at these monkeys very carefully - she just gave us a little glimpse of what they've found - but thus far XMRV is setting up camp in the lymphoid organs and the reproductive organs of these animals. The lymphoid organs (spleen, thymus, bone marrow, etc.) create lymphocytes (among other things) - the white blood cells the WPI was studying.
Fuente: Aboutmecfs