Anyone Treating the Eight Herpes Viruses with Antivirals?

There are at least eight herpes virus variants that infect humans. These include:

Human herpes virus 1 (HHV1) is also known as herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV1).
Human herpes virus 2 (HHV2) is also called herpes simplex virus 2 (HSV2).
Human herpes virus 3 (HHV3) is also called varicella-zoster virus. HHV3 causes chickenpox.
Human herpes virus 4 (HHV4) is also known as the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV).
Human herpes virus 5 (HHV5) is the official name of cytomegalovirus (CMV).
Human herpes virus 6 (HHV6)
Human herpes virus 7 (HHV7)
Human herpes virus 8 (HHV8)

Many of these, such as EBV and CMV, either downregulate the vitamin D receptor (VDR) or prevent vitamin D from metabolizing into the active form that stimulates that receptor.

Some of these viruses are now considered to be potentially involved in Alzheimer's disease. A very powerful Taiwanese study found that patients over age 50 with particular Herpes Simplex Virus variants had a 250% higher chance of developing Alzheimer's. The stunning part of that study was that when they gave the patients common antivirals they completely reversed the disease risk.

This leads me to make the observation that these very common human viruses may be co-infections that greatly lower our innate immunity, and therefore make the severity of our CFS conditions much worse. Should every CFS patient be running labs to determine their status of all eight Herpes viruses, and then treating these under medical supervision with antivirals? The hypothesis would be that with a lower viral load, the body's innate immunity will improve, thus allowing the body to fight many other kinds of bacterial and viral invaders more effectively.

 

Recent studies by people like Lipkin indicate that the viral load in PWME is no different from normal.

 

„normal“ being higher risk for Alzheimers than „unnormal“ (being negative then)?

 

@pone Ron Davis

 

There are recent studies as well that indicate PwME have a more robust immune response rather than a weaker immune system. I believe this is the reason for some of the typical flu-like symptoms that PwME experience -- swollen lymph nodes, sore throat, mild fever, aching muscles -- when challenged with more activity than the body can handle.

See: Here

I think there is other research in support as well. Perhaps someone with more knowledge can point them out.

I couldn't find any references for Lipkin's work regarding viral loads being normal in PwME. It would be good to have a reference for that as well in the conversation.

 

Lipkin and Hornig reported this maybe three years ago. But being negative findings I am not sure I ever saw a publication.. I think there was something that included finding some odd viruses less in ME, but not ones that seemed likely to be relevant clinically.

 

Bet they were looking in the wrong places.

 

Was unaware of this but at any rate I went looking for something that was maybe a write-up in layman english that discussed this and couldn't find anything.

In the interim (past several minutes) I have found the thread on Viruses and Ron Davis/Bob Naviaux's remarks: Here

 

How could anyone know that? There is no reason to think sequestered virus would be more common in ME as far as I am aware.

 

My memory is that Davis did not find any evidence of more viruses either. But Lipkin is a professional virologist. Davis would have made use of other people's expertise. If Lipkin found nothing I think one would need some fairly strong evidence to suggest he had not looked hard enough.

 

I had a look on PubMed and it seems that Lipkin and Hornig have not published their big viral screen. They presented the findings sometime around 20114 I think.

 

I don't know that. I don't remember the specifics of every study of theirs I read. But I suspect it since I do seem to recall Lipkin admonishing ME/CFS researchers not to look at tissue, or something to that end. With my memory, maybe I am misremembering, but it was striking at the time, so I doubt it.

As for no reason to believe sequestered viruses are more frequent in ME patients than normal, who's been looking recently besides Chia in tissue?

 

Is there a link to any discussion of their data? I guess they could not get the study published.

I am going to use your research approach against you. Let's go back to this old study, which assured us that Alzheimer's brains had a viral load no different from normal. And yet, here we are with this Taiwan study that shows just a single viral infection with Herpes Simplex Virus 1 (aka HHV1) raised Alzheimer's risk by 250%. And they completely eradicated the Alzheimer's risk by treating with antivirals. Let's all appreciate that sometimes science measures the wrong thing and asks the wrong questions.

These things can be non-obvious. It might be that you need to consider combinations of viruses rather than absolute quantities. Or what might actually matter is whether you have particular types of viruses that disable innate immunity - for example by disabling the vitamin d receptor - which many of the herpes viruses do. EBV dramatically lowers VDR activity. CMV alters your ability to convert inactive D to active D to enable VDR in infected tissues. Maybe if you have the right combination of viral and bacterial pathogens, your innate immunity is sufficiently compromised that you can no longer fight off many common pathogen exposures, but only in particular tissues. And maybe the brain is particularly susceptible to this.

I don't pretend to understand the "why". But my example with Alzheimer's should demonstrate why I am not persuaded by a study that only looks at viral loads. The idea deserves a deeper look, and someone should try some antivirals with CFS and measure the outcome.

 

That study is not showing a stronger immune system in CFS. That study is showing that the CFS patients might be having an immune response to "something". That immune response might be measurable but somehow compromised or insufficient to resolve the insult.

 

Reading their full remarks, it is pretty clear that just measuring viral loads alone is not going to give any insights.

 

Here is some background on Lipkin's CFS research.

 

My daughter improved considerably ME wise on acyclovir and then collapsed when the prophylactic treatment was temporarily withdrawn some years ago. I am not sure if she has v1 or v2. Also she has severe eczema since hours post birth. Immunity not her strength.

 

The issue with anti-virals is the negative effect that they can have on mitochondrial function. I believe as well that Lipkin has talked about not finding ongoing viral infections, although I can't find a link at the moment to confirm this, as has Ron Davis as linked above, so I personally certainly wouldn't be keen on taking them.

 

I have been reading about the mitochondrial issues as well, so certainly you would not want to be on antivirals forever. And realistically you would want to identify the specific virus that you hypothesize to be responsible for your condition and ideally measure the viral load before and after treatment.

I am intrigued by the Alzheimer's study I originally posted. As I said in this post, there is an old Alzheimer's study showing no discernible viral load in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. Yet the Taiwan study finds if you have HSV1 that your Alzheimer's risk goes up 250% and if you take antivirals then your risk is essentially removed.

Could the neurological component of CFS be a brain infection by HSV1 - effectively early-stage Alzheimer's - that is able to establish itself because of the host's weakened state? It's a question, not a statement of fact.