Dr. Mazlen
We have a very important show for you today. We have a show I want
you to listen to very carefully. I want you to pay attention to what
our guest will be saying to you in just a little while, for you, for your
people who are involved in healthcare, persons with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
or undiagnosed viral diseases, health care practitioners that you may be
in touch with. Listen very carefully for we have as our guest today W.
John Martin from the west coast who is the founder and director of the
Center for Complex Infectious Diseases which is in Rosemead, California.
Dr. John Martin, who's an eminent and distinguished researcher has been
on our show in the past. He was with us here in June of 1997. Welcome,
John to the show again. We're just delighted that you could take time to
be with us. OK. I want start off and say, what's happened since June of 1997
with the stealth virus which is your major topic of research and interest.
Dr. Martin
Basically, we've pursued now to the conclusion that Chronic Fatigue
Syndrome is a viral illness that damages the brain. As you may recall,
the viruses that cause CFS avoid the immune system because they lack certain
antigens recognized by cytotoxic lymphocytes, but they can still cause
cell damage. These atypically structured viruses were called "stealth"
in the sense of their being neglected by the immune system and therefore
cause these persistent illnesses. So what's new to report is the real unfortunate
realization now that stealth viral infections can progress to very severe
illness, including death. This has come from following certain patients
who have helped document this realization and now is the time to take this
information to the public health officials, to the public so that we can
do something about this huge epidemic.
Dr. Mazlen
"Huge" is a good word. It's all over. I just want to mention that I
have patients who had vacationed in Arizona a couple of years ago, came
back with viral symptoms. I sent blood samples to Dr. Martin who was kind
enough to analyze them and both of them were positive. One of them is doing
fairly well. The other one is doing extremely poorly and has, at this point
in time, a serious case of pancreatic cancer which we'll get back to later.
Now, you're saying that CFIDS or Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome
basically is a viral illness, so you suspect that a stealth virus, or types
of stealth viruses are involved in most cases. Is that correct?
Dr. Martin
Absolutely. We've been able to improve the culturing of these viruses
and we now have hard sequence data, the way in which these viruses
have assembled themselves, the way that they've recombined with other genes,
the cellular, viral, bacterial origins. In many ways, stealth viruses can
be regarded as nature's biological weapons program. It really is a sinister
virus in the sense that it can take varying structural forms but it has
the basic capacity to imbed itself in the brain, persist in the brain causing
brain dysfunction. What, again, has really brought attention to this virus
has been the outbreak in the Mohave Valley, outbreaks in the east coast
where multiple members in the family are all infected and typically, we're
seeing now, over and over again, dementia occurring in the elderly adults
in the family, depression, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in young adults and
then learning and behavioral disorders in children and when we look at
these families we can identify common features, particularly the ability
to culture out stealth viruses from each of the family members.
Dr. Mazlen
Now, you're culturing stuff out on patients all over the country. I
know you have physicians cooperating with you in areas of the northeast
like myself and others who are members of the stealth virus task force
which you assembled earlier in 1998. What I would like to know is do you
find that this virus is increasing in its prevalence? Do you feel it's
going outside the Mohave area into other areas in some significant amount?
Dr. Martin
Oh, absolutely. In fact, there is no fundamental difference between
the infections that we've seen in the Mohave Valley and the rest that we
see in the east coast, particularly areas of New York. As you mentioned,
we're working now with several clinicians. The good things that's come
from this is indications, not yet with controlled studies which need to
be confirmed, but indications that as the diseases are identified as being
viral, then therapy directed at treating the virus has brought about significant
improvement in the patients.
Dr. Mazlen
Well, certainly, that's very, very important and hopeful. You've done
a paper, I just want to mention one that's actually in publication which
is "Modern Day Outbreak of Epidemic Neuromyesthenia Mohave Valley Arizona
which you wrote with Donovan J. Anderson. Is that in press or is that coming
out shortly?
Dr. Martin
That's basically the compilation of numerous patients. A paper that's
about to come out is a paper that describes an 8 year old
child who is the son of a person in the Mohave Valley who has Chronic
Fatigue Syndrome. The point of this particular child is that he did have
this severe disease that slowly developed. When it first started, he was
just noted at school to have a behavioral problem. He was labeled as having
attention deficit, acting out, and was fully 7 months into his illness
before his parents became suspicious that something organic might be occurring,
then took him to a neurologist. What was so interesting is that when he did his clinical evaluation on this child,
he could find no obvious abnormailites in muscle sensory functions, yet
at the same time, magnetic resonance imaging on the child's brain showed
severe disease. Since they did not know the cause of the disease in the
child, they didn't really appreciate that the mother was sick or that there
was this outbreak occurring in this area of the county, they went ahead
and considered that he might have either a tumor or some degenerative process
in the brain. They did a brain biopsy. The biopsy was sent around the country
including the National Institutes of Health, and other major neuropathological
centers. There were clear abnormalities, vacuolated cells but the conventional
wisdom in pathology departments is not to appreciate viral illnesses of
this type in the brain. The parents also took the child to major medical
centers on the east coast and west coast and a major center this side,
even though they had the first brain biopsy, needed to go back in for a
second brain biopsy to see what was going on. It showed the same abnormality
but it was not linked to a virus. Fortunately, I heard about this case
and knowing that the mother had been infected was able to test the child.
The child was strongly virally positive and I could then go back and look
at the brain biopsies and demonstrate to various people, how if you look
at the brain biopsy as a viral illness, it's very, very apparent. This
child, fortunately, went on to an antiviral treatment and within two weeks
of that had a 30% improvement. Prior to that treatment, the indications
from the various specialists that he had seen was that this child would
have died within two to three months.
Dr. Mazlen
Well, congratulations on intervening and saving him.
(Break)
As I said to our listening audience. This is an extremely important
show. Listen carefully. We will be taking some phone calls but first I
want to talk to Dr. Martin about how infectious is this virus and how quickly
this has spread amongst families?
Dr. Martin
Very good question, and again, we now know that the virus can take
various forms. It would seem in some individuals it is quite infectious
as I had mentioned, we're hearing more and more of families where different
members are showing the symptoms. It's hard to see how the virus would
not eventually spread within the family, but in some situations it really
is causing devastating consequences. This basically does raise the stakes
in terms of a public health emergency as some of these viruses are clearly
able to cause devastation within families. All right, we're going to take
a question. We have Jeff on the line in New York. Jeff are you there? You
have a question on the virus for Dr. Martin?
Jeff,
Yes, I've had this type of syndrome for quite some time and recently
I've developed arthritic type condition in my fingers and my question is,
what Dr. Martin might be able to tell us regarding the development of an
autoimmune type arthritic condition in connection with stealth virus.
Dr. Martin
Yes, sure, I can answer your question. Jeff, the basic issue has been
that people in the past have separated autoimmune from genetic from infectious
from environmental illnesses. More and more now one can see these pathologies
being additive. My indications are if one has a viral illness that contributes
to this illness, then one is prone to develop complications that can include
autoimmune disease. So, I see the autoimmune being an added complication
to having an underlying viral illness. And we've seen that in our stealth
viral cultures in patients who do have autoimmune diseases affecting their
joints, their thyroid, other parts. There are diseases like lupus erythematosis
where again account for it as an underlying viral illness complicated by
autoimmune processes.
Jeff
That does make a lot of sense to me, thank you.
Dr. Mazlen
We'll take one more question, John and we'll go back to talking about
the research. Jeeney in Staten Island.
Jeeney
My question today is I had heard that the stealth virus was a combination
of HHV6 and cytomegalovirus. Is that true?
Dr. Martin
Again, we now know a lot more about the structure of stealth viruses
and in the same ways that clinicians tend to use broad terms to describe
clinical entities, the names herpesvirus 6, cytomegaloviruses, oversimplify
the complex genetics that are involved in the formation of stealth viruses.
We know that stealth viruses can contain elements from some of these other
viruses, but they're better to be seen as a unique form of virus that persists
rather than as a straight forward HHV6 or cytomegalovirus. The big difference
is that our immune systems can cope with cytomegalovirus, can cope with
human herpesvirus 6, because they have the targets for cytotoxic T cells
to suppress virally infected cells. Stealth viruses avoid the immune system,
they don't have those targets, and therefore stealth viruses can cause
persistent illness.
Jeeney
Is there a treatment yet?
Dr. Martin
And the issue of treatment is... I would say there is optimism because
of the courageous clinicians who've gone out there with antiviral therapies.
They have provided guidelines. Those treatments now have to be subjected
to well designed clinical trials so that the benefit can be fully documented.
More importantly, the actual treatment protocol can be optimized so as
to suppress the viral infections.
Dr. Mazlen
John, let's quickly go back to Lyme Disease. You said now, with the
stealth virus in the cells it activates or makes the lyme disease organism,
the borrelia more virulent, more active?
Dr. Martin
Yes, this was an absolutely fantastic observation, Roger. The clinicians
from the east coast were sending samples from patients who had been diagnosed
as having Lyme Disease, having years of antibiotic treatment. So, I was
able to obtain the bacteria associated with Lyme Disease, called borrelia,
from the National Institutes of Health and could culture it in the presence
of normal cells or cells infected with stealth viruses. Straight forward
under the microscope, stealth viruses cause cells to accumulate a lot of
lipid type material, big vacuoles and it essentially established a feeding
frenzy for these borrelia. In the normal culture one had a hard time finding
any bacteria. In the stealth viral infected cultures, one could see cells
bulging in many directions because the borrelia were able to feed off the
lipid which they require for their cell coat. So it became a very obvious
indication that if one had an underlying stealth viral infection, one might
be more prone to borrelia Lyme Disease infection. And that's been borne
out in the fact that patients who've been diagnosed with Lyme Disease had
in fact been showing good responses to antiviral treatments.
Dr. Mazlen
That's a very important observation because out here in the northeast,
we're rapidly approaching the Lyme Disease season which obviously has begun
with spring.
(Break)
We're going to finish with some exciting information from W. John Martin,
M.D., Ph.D. John, you'd mentioned to me also at another time that this
virus is capable of assembling and using oncogenes from other sources.
Is it capable of promoting cancer?
Dr. Martin
Yes, and again, it really adds to the need for a major public health
campaign to understand these viruses. One paper about to appear this month
indicates that a stealth virus can capture, in other words, incorporate
into it's own genome, amplify and mutate, genes that we have associated
with cancer, oncogenes. In this particular case a melanoma gene. This raises
the stakes about these viruses. In the past, there was enough concern that
they were causing brain damage. Now they have the capacity to induce damage
in the individual cells in the form of stimulating the cells' growth and
possibly leading to tumors. What I'd like to convey to your listening audience
is that this is a problem. I'm very interested to hear of families where
multiple members of families are infected. Unusual illnesses are being
described, baffling the local medical specialists. I think as we focus
on the severe illnesses, it will help expedite the development of effective
therapy.
Dr. Mazlen
Once again, I'm going to give the number of the center for people who
have this type of information, 626-572-7288
to report cases or have your treating physicians report cases. John,
how big a public health menace is this. What kind
of an alert should we be having at this time?
Dr. Martin
Well, I'm hoping that this radio show will kick what needs to be conveyed
very rapidly now through public health offices, our local Los Angeles County
public health department. You have had other guests, Donovan Anderson
in particular, with Needles, California. I think this is a major problem
in terms of the number of children in special education in the schooling
system and the number of adults who have had these very complex illnesses
that haven't been understood in the context of viral infection.
Dr. Mazlen
And fortunately, in some people it's treatable which is also important.
Hopefully, you'll see soon be opening a laboratory at the City of Angles
Hospital. We all wish you good fortune at getting that up and running.
When it is up and running we're going to announce it here on the show.
You'll let me know when that is the case and to what extent testing can
be obtained through that laboratory and we'll be more than delighted to
bring that to the attention of the public.
Transcribed by
Carolyn Viviani
cvintucson@home.com
Permission is given to repost, copy and distribute this transcript as
long as my name is not removed from it.
© 1999 Roger
G. Mazlen, M.D.
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