I've been laying low and quiet lately, focusing on my striving to heal. This has been a particularly rough week physically, after a severe allergic reaction to airborne latex last weekend.
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 write a unique article myself, I'm using a template post that someone else put a lot of time and energy into writing for me. If you area 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 GivenMeaThorn, 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
