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by Source: Dr. Konstance Knox
January 1, 1999
Six patients with chronic fatigue involved in a pioneering study that may point to a definitive biological cause of for the disease. The study is being performed by researchers in Wisconsin, who suspect the illness is triggered by a reactivated form of human herpes virus 6, or HHV-6, a common bug that exists in a dormant state in healthy people. The results of the study will be delivered at the AAFCS National Conference in Boston this fall.
The privately funded study is one of several nationwide trying to find a clinical test for CFIDS. Other researchers are trying to link the disease to other cellular pathogens, including mycoplasma incognitus and chlamydia pneumoniae.
Reactivated HHV-6 is found in almost two-thirds of all chronic fatigue patients after two blood tests, according to Dr. Konstance Knox, a pathologist and researcher at Herpesvirus Diagnostics, a private laboratory in suburban Milwaukee. This would indicate that at least that many people could benefit from readily available antiviral medications, she said.
Knox, also a adjunct faculty member at the Medical College of Wisconsin, concedes that, in fact, that the number of CFIDS patients with reactivated HHV-6 is probably even higher than 62%. It is hard to arrive at a concrete percentage because the virus circulates in and out of the bloodstream and is more likely to show up in multiple tests than just one.
Knox tested six chronic fatigue patients in the Rochester area and five showed up as positive for HHV-6. For some unknown reason, maybe genetic, the virus reappears, causing a debilitating wave of illness whose symptoms arrive in waves.
About 300,000 patients have diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, but according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) the number might be actually three times higher.
Knox's study of 400 patients with CFIDS will also be presented at the AAFCS conference in October. A manuscript is also being prepared for the New England Journal of Medicine. The goal of her data is to help educate physicians. The reactivated HHV-6 is also found in many of the patients who suffer from multiple sclerosis, a disease that, according to Dr. Knox, overlaps profoundly with chronic fatigue.
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