Norwegians to study XMRV in severe ME/CFS with the WPI !!

Translated from Norwegian by Google; which has now been changed to one made by SERENDIPITYCAT herself !!

by SERENDIPITYCAT, wed 09 MARCH, 2011:

Many of you already know that the doctors and researchers at Lillestrøm Health Clinic in Norway are doing research on retroviruses and ME/CFS.

Now, the new website “Pasientfora” (forum for patients) has published the project description for this study regarding gammaretroviruses in ME/CFS-patients in Norway. It’s very interesting!

The official title of the study is: The Norwegian study of CFS, NO-CFS, Stage 1: Confirmatory stydy for the detection on Gamma-retrovirus related Gene Sequences.

Academically strong project team
The project manager of the research project is Dr. Mette Johnsgaard, general manager, physician and researcher at Lillestrøm Health Clinic. She has a very strong project team with her:

- Professor Ola Didrik Saugstad, Rikshospitalet University Hospital in Oslo. (Supervisor of the research study)
Researcher Prof. Dr. Med Judy Mikovits, director of research Whittemore-Peterson Institute (WPI), Reno i USA.
Researcher Dr. Med. Mauro Malnati, group manager for human virology at the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milano, Italia.
Researcher and physician Dr. Ingrid Lund, Lillestrøm Health Clinic
Researcher and physician Dr. Sigrid Holterman Holmen, Lillestrøm Health Clinic

The project started in October 2010 and is estimated to last until april 2011. The project is financed by Lillestrøm Health Clinic and the other participating research institutes.

Exciting hypothesis
According to the project description, the hypothesis to be studied are:

“Patients with severe, disabling ME/CFS have an ongoing MLV-related virus infection that is the main reason for their disease. Close relatives may or may not also have a latent retroviral infection. We want to look further info differences between extremely disabled patients, healthy relatives, and healthy controls in retroviral prevalence.

We will also look into markers for immune dysfunction including cytokine profiles, and also antibody detection. We believe it is possible to find biomarkeds that can be used to follow the disease.

We believe it is possible that the retroviral reservoir is the B cells. This can explain the positive effect of rituximab. Mature B cells expressing the CD20 will then have to carry the major retroviral load. However, as immature B cells emerge from stem cells in the bone marrow and plasma cells, the increasing retroviral load contributes to the increasing symptoms reappering as the effect of rituximab lessens over time.”

The project is approved by the Regional comitte for research ethics in medicine in Norway.

Dr. Johnsgaard says the following about the background of the study: ... serendipitycat has now kindly made a translation of the post into English, which you can find here