Dear fellow patients, physicians and scientists:

The quest for identifying and treating retroviruses that are involved in the pathogenesis or CFS/ME, neuroimmune, autoimmune and neoplastic disorders will not end today despite the negative results of the XMRV, pMLV study. I have CFS/ME and cancer. My data supports the presence and importance of retroviruses in the pathogenesis of both disorders and the potential for anti-retroviral drugs to help us.

My data shows the presence of a clonal T-lymphocyte expansion which is probably CD8 cells. Having a clonal T-lymphocyte expansion is abnormal.  In addition, I have increased monocytes (monocytosis). I have looked at 56 of my patients with various types of cancer and half of them also have a detectable T-lymphocyte expansion and monocytosis. My point is that what I see in myself may be a common phenomenon and actually may be happening in millions of people. I haven’t looked in CFS/ME, because I limit my practice to Hematology-Oncology.

T-lymphocytes and monocytes are important because they are permissive of retroviral invasion and because they are pre-programmed to make cytokines. Presumably the increased numbers of these cells after infection has occurred would lead to increased amounts of cytokines that would dysregulate the immune system. In addition, monocytes give rise to the microglial cells which migrate to the brain and spinal cord and potentially could deposit abnormal amounts of cytokines in direct proximity to the neural elements.

Dr. Lipkin mentioned a polyclonal expansion of B-lymphocytes as important in our type of disorder and this could be a result of the increased amount of cytokines. In fact, in my patients who had a clonal T-lymphocyte expansion and/or monocytosis, 50% had autoimmune markers. What is reasonable to postulate is that we now have explained the known connection between inflammation and cancer and neurodegenerative disorders and it all goes back to the retroviruses.

I have previously shown response of my leukemia, monocytosis and clonal T-cells to AZT, raltegravir and after relapse a second response to the addition of tenofovir. I had hoped to demonstrate that a PI would be valuable treatment and waited to add this category of drug until relapse. My leukemia responded and relapsed in parallel with the monocytosis and clonal T-cell expansion but at a somewhat different rate.

The last graph shows that the clonal T-lymphocytes, CD8 lymphocytes and monocytes were increasing after relapse on AZT, raltegravir and tenofovir. Quest discontinued doing the quantitative TCRγ in 2011. As a favor to me, Quest put it up but with different reagents so that the results from the new assay are not superimposable over 2011’s. Please note that the clonal TCRγ values are a ratio rather than an absolute number of cells.

I didn’t have the new clonal T-cell assay available until later in the graph and didn’t think of looking for CD8 cells initially. After the relapse was clearly documented, I added the PI, lopinavir. The T-cell parameters and monocytes continued to trend up for the next 4-8 weeks before clearly trending down.

The only reasonable explanation for what has happened to me and what I have found in half of my cancer patients is that retroviruses participate in the pathogenesis of our illnesses. Please note that I do not claim that the retroviruses cause the illnesses but emphasize that the retroviruses participate in the pathogenesis. The likelihood is that genetic susceptibility and toxic exposure determines whether an infected person would develop disease and how it would be manifested.

It is clear to me from the data I have, that many people have susceptibility to develop disease after infection with retroviruses. It is now up to the scientists to identify the infection and the basis of genetic susceptibility. Once there are easy methods to identify who is infected and with what, treatment trials could be started. We must go forward.

Michael Snyderman, MD

Click figures to enlarge