Fibromyalgia Support Group

You're not alone in your pain. Fibromyalgia is a condition that can be difficult to diagnose and manage. If you're trying to cope with pain throughout your body, sleep problems, general fatigue, or other common fibromyalgia symptoms, you're in the right place. The community is here for you to talk about therapies and share your challenges.

4,403 Members
50,123 Posts
0 Online
Muscles & Bones
/ Fibromyalgia Support Group

Virus

AnnNY
AnnNY
The New York Times just ran this story on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/health/research/24fatigue.html?_r=1&hp

Fibro and Chronic Fatigue are often thought of as two manifestations of the same illness. They have already tested a few fibro patients in the first study and found they also had this retrovirus. Now perhaps we should push for a larger fibro/XMRV study.

In the meantime, I hope Doctors who have shamed both CFS patients and Fibro patients for there complaints will feel shame themselves for the additional pain they have cause people who are just trying to keep going the best that they can living with chronic pain and fatigue!!!
deleted_user
deleted_user
Maybe my doc. is just evolved, but she sees CFS and Fibro. as the same. Hopefully their are many others that can and will make the connection, but I still fear its a long hall, at least psychologically. Even when you tell people there is an identifiable virus, you get the deer in the head lights look.
LeoX3
LeoX3
My FIL helped pioneer DNA analysis and genetic detection of disease, and he thinks there is both a predisposition and a necessary trigger for diseases like CFS/Fibro, and others. It's that the trigger (stress, injury, etc.) cause the body's immune system to weaken, and this allows a virus to go active instead of being dormant. You'd be surprised how many bugs we carry in us that lie dormant for decades, even our whole lives.... and then something helps trigger them "awake".

Or the trigger starts a lethal feedback loop, like a friend of mine who has "common variable immunodeficiency" (fancy speak for: Her immune system quit working and no one is sure why even after nearly a decade of tests and treatments).

It's really interesting that it's a retrovirus. Those are such tough little bugs to deal with! But it's good that someone is thinking there's a link and following up on it. Thanks for posting the article!
Narey
Narey
What has to be accepted is that there is no clear cut line of exact cause and effect. I agree w/ your fil, LeoX3, that there is a genetic component (maybe a gene is expressed that ought not to be or one is mutated, etc) and an environmental trigger, which could be the retrovirus itself, as well. "Catch" the retrovirus, and it activates any number of dormant or latent troubles you have lying in wait.

I am part of the Coriell Personalized Medicine Collaborative, which is doing personal genetic testing for a longitudinal study. It's interesting to learn how genes play a part in diseases you wouldn't think of as genetic.