Coconut oil - new XMV virus possible cause of Prostate Cancer and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,

[Guest guest]

The below article was clipped from Bruce Fife's Newsletter No. 7. Mr. Fife has

undergone and is still doing extensive research on coconut oil.

 

Melly

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Can Viruses Cause Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?

 

New research links chronic fatigue syndrome and some forms of cancer to a new

AIDS-like virus.

 

A study published recently in the journal Science 1 suggests that a virus that

has already been linked to some forms of cancer2 might be the underlying cause

of chronic fatigue syndrome. The study reported that many patients who have the

syndrome are infected with a recently discovered virus.

 

Chronic fatigue syndrome has long been a medical mystery and the subject of

debate, sometimes bitter, among doctors, researchers and patients. It affects at

least one million Americans, causing extreme fatigue, muscle and joint pain,

sleep problems, difficulty concentrating and other symptoms. Its cause is

unknown, symptoms can last for years and there is no effective treatment.

Researchers disagree about whether it is one disease or a collection of symptoms

that may have different causes in different patients. It has sometimes been

stigmatized as more mental than physical, with patients labeled neurotic,

depressed or

hypochondriacal. Many patients find even the name of the disorder

(“syndromeâ€) offensive, a not-so-subtle hint that it is not a real disease.

 

But the new study is not conclusive, and a great deal of work remains to be done

to find out whether the new virus really does play a role. Just detecting it in

patients does not prove it is what made them sick; people with the syndrome may

have some other underlying problem that makes them susceptible to the virus,

which could be just a passenger in their cells.

 

Even so, thousands of patients have already contacted scientists, asking to be

tested, said Dr. Judy Mikovits, the first author of the study and the research

director at the Whittemore Peterson Institute in Reno, a research center created

by the parents of a woman who has the syndrome. Dr. Mikovits said she expected a

test to become available “within weeks.â€

 

The new suspect is a xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus, or XMRV,

which probably descended from a group of viruses that cause cancer in mice. How

or when XMRV found its way into humans is unknown. But it has also been linked

to cancer in people: it was first identified a few years ago, in prostate

cancer, and later detected in about one-quarter of biopsies from men with that

disease (and in only 6 percent of benign biopsies). It is a retrovirus, from the

same notorious family that causes AIDS and leukemia in people.

 

Dr. Mikovits and researchers from the National Cancer Institute and Cleveland

Clinic reported in Science that 68 of 101 patients with chronic fatigue

syndrome, or 67 percent, were infected with XMRV, compared with only 3.7 percent

of 218 healthy control subjects. Further testing after the paper was written

found the virus in nearly 98 percent of about 300 patients with the syndrome,

Dr. Mikovits said.

 

She said she believed that the virus would eventually be found in every patient

with chronic fatigue syndrome. XMRV affects the immune system, can probably

cause a variety of illnesses and may join forces with other viruses to bring on

the syndrome, she said.

 

Dr. William C. Reeves, who directs public health research on the syndrome at the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) called the research exciting

but preliminary. “We and others are looking at our own specimens and trying to

confirm it,†he said. He noted that there had been earlier studies suggesting

an infectious involvement in chronic fatigue syndrome, including a study in the

1990s linking the syndrome to another retrovirus.3 Most likely, the syndrome is

not caused by any one particular virus but any number of similar organisms. This

may explain why the same virus is not found in all chronic fatigue patients.

 

Frustration with the lack of answers over the years has led Annette and Harvey

Whittemore, whose 31-year-old daughter has had the syndrome for 20 years, to

spend several million dollars to set up a research institute at the University

of Nevada in Reno in 2004, and to hire Dr. Mikovits to direct it.

 

Mrs. Whittemore said she had long believed that the syndrome was an infectious

disease, but that scientists had rejected the idea. She finally decided, she

said, “If there was a place of our own where we could find the answers, we

could do it more quickly.â€

 

Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University,

said that the notion of a lingering viral infection was plausible. He said that

although some patients claiming to have the syndrome seemed more likely to have

a psychological problem, others seemed to have a physical illness.

 

“There is a group who are young, healthy, active, and engaged, and all of a

sudden they are laid low by something,†Dr. Schaffner said. “Everyone tells

the physicians these are people who are functional and productive, and this is

totally out of character. They are frustrated and often quite disheartened. You

feel that medical science hasn’t caught up with their illness yet.†Skip to

next paragraph

 

The National Cancer Institute is taking XMRV very seriously, said Dr. Stuart Le

Grice, head of its Center of Excellence in HIV/AIDS and Cancer Virology. He said

health officials became especially concerned last spring when several research

teams looking at prostate cancer reported finding XMRV in 3 percent to 4 percent

of blood samples from healthy people in control groups. That could translate

into 10 million Americans being infected with a newly discovered, poorly

understood retrovirus that has already been linked to two diseases.

 

“Any virus at that level is obviously a cause for concern,†Dr. Le Grice

said, adding that it was important to find out if the virus was associated with

any more diseases, and how closely.

 

He said that just carrying the virus did not necessarily mean a person was at

high risk for disease, noting that people may harbor other viruses that will

never harm them. The immune system probably keeps the viruses in check.

 

But he asked, “If it is a problem, how well can we diagnose it and how well

can we treat it?†Even though antiretroviral drugs have already been developed

to treat HIV infection, he said this virus was different and might need its own

line of drugs. He said more studies were needed to find out how common the virus

is and how it is being transmitted.

 

The new findings have intrigued scientists and are seen as vindication by some

patients with chronic fatigue syndrome and inspired in them hope for a

treatment. “I just feel like the whole future has changed for us,†said Anne

Ursu, 36, a writer living in Cleveland who has the syndrome.

 

While medical treatments may take time to develop, those suffering from chronic

fatigue syndrome do not have to wait, they can start right now, today, battling

this disease. The medium chain fatty acids in coconut oil are known to kill

retrovirus similar to HIV and XMRV. Many chronic fatigue sufferers have reported

positive results by adding coconut oil into their diets. An added benefit with

the coconut oil is that it also boosts energy levels, giving chronic fatigue

sufferers a much needed energy lift.

 

Unlike most medications, coconut oil doesn’t have any harmful side effects and

may do a lot of good. For those who want to learn more about treating infectious

illnesses with coconut oil, I recommend The New Arthritis Cure: Eliminate

Arthritis and Fibromyalgia Pain Permanently. Although this book focuses on

arthritis and fibromyalgia, fibromyalgia is commonly associated with chronic

fatigue and the techniques in this book are just as valuable to chronic fatigue

sufferers.

 

In addition, coconut oil has shown to possess potent anticancer properties. This

feature along with the fact that it can kill cancer-causing viruses makes it a

potentially valuable preventative treatment against XMRV-induced prostate

cancer. â– 

 

 

 

 

 

References

 

1. Lombardi, V.C., et al. Detection of an infectious retrovirus, XMRV, in blood

cells of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome. Science 2009;326:585-589.

 

2. Kean, S. Virology. Chronic fatigue and prostate cancer: a retroviral

connection? Science 2009;326:215.

 

3. DeFreitas, E., et al. Retroviral sequences relate to human T-lymphotropic

virus type II in patients with chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome. Proc

Natl Acad Sci USA 1991;88:2922-2926.

 

 

 

This article, in part, is adapted from The New York Times, “Is a Virus the

Cause of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?†by Denise Grady.