Viruses as a cause for Cancer - and other diseases (part 3)

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This article is not about the clinical side of this theory of mine - it's about the path that led me to believe in it.

For a long time now, I've been utterly convinced that most kinds of cancer (except those caused by really faulty genetics which cause childhood mortality) would eventually be discovered to be caused by either a bacterium, a fungus, or a virus.

This is a pretty bold statement, but it's one that I can trace back a long way. It's also proving fruitful - especially with the recent discovery that certain strains of HPV (human papilloma virus) can cause cervical cancer and oral cancers.

The Discovery of H. Pylori and its role in Ulcers

Back in 1982, a link was discovered between Heliobacter Pylori and ulcers - namely, that most ulcers are caused by a bacterial infection of the stomach lining. This theory took 10 years of research to confirm, and is now widely tested for - and treatable with a combination of proton pump inhibitors (to allow the stomach lining to heal) and antibiotics.

I first heard of this in 1994 when a friend of mine who had suffered from ulcers for some time finally went and got treated. (I can't remember if I came across a reference to the treatment in New Scientist and I told her, or if she already knew of it and told me). Either way, a light went off in my head. Some things - some things previously considered untreatable, or a part of the human condition, are caused by things that we just hadn't had the tools to look for, or that we just plain didn't put two and two together for.

Cholangio Carcinoma - and my mom

My mother died in September 1996 of Cholangio carcinoma - a particularly nasty kind of gallbladder cancer which wrapped itself around the hepatic portal artery, making it (at the time) inoperable. It was a drawn out affair; from original diagnosis as stomach pains, to a stay in hospital due to hemorrhaging, to her final death at home while being treated with radiation therapy and chemotherapy, and on a nearly constant morphine drip for the pain.

At the time, I spent a long time searching for all of the information I could, trying to find a cure. It wasn't easy - the internet was in larval form back then, pretty much the domain of university students and academia.

I always wanted to know why this happened. I finally think I've figured it out - but unfortunately too late for her. Sorry mom.

Crohn's Disease and my dad

Around the time that my mom died of cancer, my Dad came down with Crohn's disease. He had a section of his bowel removed, and he's mostly fine today. I'm hazy on the timeline, but I'm pretty sure that he was suffering from it during my mom's illness, and put off seeing a doctor about it until after she died and he had some room to start thinking about himself again, instead of the woman he loved more than anything (I really should share the story of how they met some time).

Is this just another case of broken heart syndrome, where the surviving spouse - through extreme stress - ends up contracting some kind of illness? I don't think so. I believe the two are intimately connected.

Warts and P52

I was reading a paper in 2001 on Human Papilloma Virus and P52. HPV causes warts in some forms, cancer in others, and in some forms, it's just a dormant thing that causes a lesion - or nothing at all. By the time you're in your 50s, you will have some form of exposure to HPV.

Apparently HPV does its magic by interfering with the expression of gene P52, a factor in cell death (apoptosis). By doing so, it's able to cause the cells to grow rapidly without being killed by the immune system - or themselves.

This got me thinking. If a virus can cause warts, and cause skin cells to grow out of control within a limited area... what's to stop it from causing other problems elsewhere? Such as cancer.

It would only be much later - in 2005 - that HPV would be making the news because of vaccines designed specifically to target it. Unfortunately, although cervical cancer had already been identified as a potentially sexually-transmitted disease, the discovery of a link between it and HPV was made in the 1970s. Why unfortunate? Because it took 35 years for a potential cure to be discovered, and for the role of the virus in the disease to become common knowledge. For some reason, that information remained locked up in medical research for way too long.

When news of the vaccine came out, it was something that I took as a personal vindication - my theory could be true!

Alzheimer's and Herpes

The connection between Alzheimer's and Herpes made the news in 2006, but I didn't catch wind of it until December 2007, at which point I was doing research on the subject because I'd heard that one of my favorite authors (Terry Pratchett) had recently been diagnosed with an early-onset form of the disease. Research in January points to a new treatment for Alzheimer's in the form of an anti-inflammatory drug known as Etanercept or Enbrel. I believe I've identified a missing link between the virus and the treatment, which you can find in my post.

Why was I researching this in December 2007? The father of someone I know well is currently dying of Glioblastoma Multiforme - a particularly nasty kind of brain cancer. I'd already seen a connection here between the alphaherpesvirinae (HSV1, HSV2, Varicella Zoster Virus) and this particular disease. I now feel that this connection is pretty solid, based on the symptoms of his wife (Multiple Sclerosis), and the fact that he had a virulent outbreak of shingles during the first round of chemotherapy. Coincidental? I hope not. I believe that all three of these conditions can be explained as varying immunity and genetic predisposition in the face of a particularly nasty Varicella Zoster Virus infection.

Further research has lead to a number of other similar connections. I'm posting this information in the hope that it spreads and people start using it.

What Changes Can We Make Today?

I would like to see, at a bare minimum, doctors start to take the history of patients as well as their spouses and children, including anyone they have been living with for a long time who has any kind of disease or condition. I'll explain this further in a later post. Let's just put it like this for now - this is essential data that we're missing, especially if it's possible that multiple conditions are caused by the same basic cause. In the case of my parents, I believe that a variant of Cytomegalovirus was the cause for both my mother's cancer, and my father's crohn's disease. This is something that could have been picked up on if medical records included this information.

My Cancer/Late Stage Of Life Disease Theory

Here's how the theory l have put together over the years lies right now:

1. There is no such thing as a "human condition" disease

Okay, so basic aging aside (that is, architectural problems that only show up in old age because the system itself is clogged), I don't believe that any disease just happens by itself. Particularly cancer. Why?

2. With the sheer number of cells in the human body, late-stage diseases such as cancer should always occur in childhood

Your body contains billions upon billions of cells, all replicating, all exposed to free radicals. Except during breastfeeding, your food supply doesn't change much through adulthood. Antioxidants, vitamins, etc, which protect cells should always affect you the same way - you shouldn't need more protection as you get older. It's a limited supply, that needs to be replenished regularly.

If you're going to see problems with replication, or other random malfunctions, then they should be as likely when you're young as when you get older. If you're going to get them when you're older, you should get them at the end of puberty if there's any magic involved in still being a child.

3. Chronic conditions build up over time, except in the case of active infection

Unless you are actively infected by something, a chronic condition will be caused by a subclinical condition occurring for a very long time. At some point, there's a tipping point, and your body is no longer able to handle the subclinical condition, or the condition is exacerbated, and it becomes full blown and noticeable as something we can point to as a disease.

4. Cancer is caused by a variety of agents, such as bacteria, funguses or viruses, meddling with the body's own machinery

Wart viruses are the best example of this. Alzheimer's is rapidly becoming a solidly defined disease that is caused - in part - by HSV1 infection of the brain.

5. Subclinical viral infection - particularly by viruses which can go "latent" or "dormant" - causes late stage diseases

We only see the active part of the infection - not the subclinical, latent phase. A latent infection can still cause symptoms and problems - look at the literature on genital herpes, where viral particles are still shed even though the virus may not be in its "active" phase.

I think that this is a reasonably solid theory, and gives us something to work with. Unless you're unlucky enough to have a genetic malfunction, we should look at other causative agents as well in most diseases - not just at the body itself.

In the next article, I'll cover the connection between Glioblastoma Multiforme, and Multiple Sclerosis, as well as other diseases which appear to be caused by Varicella Zoster Virus.

The Herpes Virus - what is it? (part 2)

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This is a picture of a herpes virus. It's a virus that most people come into contact with at one stage or other during their lives - usually when they're children. Different forms of this virus cause:

Virus Subtype	Classification	Disease
Herpes Simplex Type 1 (HSV1)	HHV1	Coldsores
Herpes Simplex Type 2 (HSV2)	HHV2	Genital Herpes
Varicella Zoster Virus (VZV)	HHV3	Chickenpox, shingles
Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV)	HHV4	Mono (infectious mononucleosis), Burkitt's Lyphoma, CNS symptoms in AIDS patients, post-transplant lymphoproliferative syndrome (PTLD), nasopharyngeal carcinoma
Cytomegalovirus (CMV)	HHV5	Mono-like symptoms (infectious mononucleosis-like syndrome), retinitis, cytomegalovirus colitis, cytomegalovirus hepatitis
Roseolavirus	HHV6, 7	"Rose rash" (roseola infantum), "sixth disease", "three day fever", "baby measles"
Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV)	HHV8	Kaposi's sarcoma, primary effusion lymphoman, some types of Castleman's disease

Table taken from Wikipedia.

There may be other forms of this virus associated with other diseases in humans; there are over 100 known herpes viruses - there may well be many more.

The viruses are classified into three groups based on the types of tissue they exhibit affinity for in the body.

Viruses	Tissue type	Classification
HSV1, HSV2, VZV	Nervous system tissue	Alphaherpesvirinae
CMV, Roseolavirus	Lymph tissue and lymphatic system	Betaherpesvirinae
EBV, KSHV	T or B lymphocytes; also lymphotropic	Gammaherpesvirinae

As many as 90% of the population carry one or all of these viruses in their systems. After infection, the virus hides in a latent form, where it can stay dormant for years - possibly forever - until the conditions are ripe for it to come out and replicate again.

In the alpha viruses, it hides inside the cytosome of the nervous tissue awaiting reactivation, often caused by stress or inflammation. I mentioned this previously in an earlier post on Alzheimers, Herpes and Etanercept; the key trigger for alpha virus reactivation appears to be the presence of TNEF-alpha in large quantities, telling the virus that it's safe to come out because the immune system is currently busy.

In the beta viruses, they hide inside the nucleii of the lympahtic cells themselves, causing what are known as "Owl's Eye" inclusion bodies - so called from their appearance:

The gamma viruses behave similarly to the beta viruses, but target specific lymphocytes.

When the virus replicates, it often destroys the host cell in the process, or severely distorts it.

The Herpes Virus - A cause for more diseases than we give it credit for?

Most of the literature on the web tends to only consider the problems with chronic and acute infections by herpes viruses. These typically form in children (upon first exposure), in the form of sexually transmitted disease (HSV2), or in immunocompromised patients (for example, people with AIDS, organ transplant patients, cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy).

They don't tend to consider the long-term effects of a sub-clinical infection; after all, if there are no symptoms, then the body is looking after itself - it's why we have an immune system.

However, I believe that it is important to consider sub-clinical infection and asymptomatic infection as potential causes or cofactors in a wide number of diseases - ranging from heart disease to most cancers.

This is becoming more possible now, partly because of the creation of gene-chip technology - especially viral chip assays, which allow any tissue sample to be tested for the presence of a virus quickly and efficiently. This is something that was not easily possible before, and has lead to the discovery of the presence of herpesviridae in many cancers. However, the researchers are not yet willing to draw a conclusive line between these results and the cause of the diseases themselves. In the case of Alzheimer's disease, however, we can definitively say at this point that there is a direct connection. And much of the research is showing other connections too.

The next article in this series will cover the path that led me to this conclusion. After that, I'll start tackling each disease, with references to the research. And finally, some proposed treatments that can if not cure the diseases, at least slow them down as long as doctors are willing to prescribe common medications off-label.

CMV Owl's Eye Inclusion picture source: Dan Wiedbrauk, Ph.D., Warde Medical Laboratory, Ann Arbor, MI. Used for educational purposes.
Herpes Virus picture source: taken from http://www.health-news-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/11-2007/suppressing-infectiousness-of-hiv.html; original source unknown

Public Enemy Number 1 - The Herpes Viruses as Causative Agents For Most Later-Life Diseases (part 1)

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This is the story of a life-form. A very small, tiny encapsulated bundle of DNA that can replicate by itself, with the help of a host - specifically, in this case, human beings. It is also the story of its siblings - a set of viruses called 'herpesviradae' - which together form a large family of viruses which infect humans and other animals.

This is also a personal story, which touches on the death of my mother in 1996, and on the lives of other friends and family, all of whom are in some way or another inextricably tied to this virus.

And this is a story of hope. The hope that as soon as this is published, people can start taking preventative measures, and active measures against a great many diseases.

If I am correct in my hypothesis - which I hope to shore up with as much direct data as possible, along with references to many medical research papers - then I hope to prove that all of the following diseases are in some way caused by the family of herpes viruses.

If this is the case - and I believe this to be true - then there are direct nutritional and pharmaceutical measures that can be taken to stave off the progress of these diseases. Hopefully this series of blog posts will help to focus the medical community, and lead to the creation of cures, treatments and preventative measures against all of these diseases.

The diseases and symptoms I will cover in this series of posts include:

• Alzheimer's Disease
• Type-II Diabetes
• High Cholesterol, including high HDL and high triglyceride levels
• Heart disease, including atherosclerosis (aka arteriosclerosis)
• Cancer of the gallbladder (cholangiocarcinoma)
• Colon cancer
• Crohn's disease
• Multiple sclerosis
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Arthritis
• Osteoporosis
• Multiple myeloma
• Glioblastoma multiforme
• Bipolar disorder
• Schizophrenia
• Hodkin's Disease
• Lymphoma
• Breast Cancer
• Kaposi's Sarcoma

There may also be other diseases for which I have not made this association yet.

I will also touch on:

• Parkinson's disease
• Prostate cancer

- both of which may be caused by other viruses, and as such are not as eminently treatable, but are similarly caused.

While I cannot prove a direct link between the virus and the symptomatic disease in all of these cases, I will be collecting enough papers together and also mechanisms of action that will provide enough evidence to show that we should be looking at the herpes viruses as the major causative agent (in combination with specific genetic variations) for these diseases.

When I have completed this series, I will collect the information together, remove most of the personal anecdotes, and attempt to publish in a medical journal. However, I believe that this information is important enough to publish in pieces while I put together the final paper.

The next post in this series will detail the changes in medical approaches to disease agents over the last 20 years or so, and my original hypothesis as to fungal, bacterial and viral agents being the underlying cause of non-juvenile cancers.

(If you are new to this series, you may want to read this post regarding the treatment of Alzheimer's with Etanercept, and how the mechanism of action may involve the herpes virus, and not simply be due to the action of TNF-alpha on synaptic function)

For some reason, Technorati isn't resyndicating this post. I'm trying to post it again to see what I can do on my end to fix it before I talk to their support people.

Amazing Alzheimer's Treatment - And Why It Works

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News today hit the interwebs of a fantastic new potential alzheimer's treatment that works on a timescale of hours. Yes, you read that right, hours.

The drug involved is Etanercept, which is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis, and has been used off-label for Alzheimer's.

Of course, this kind of scoops the posts I was planning on making here - but in a really good way :) I'll explain how all this ties into my hypotheses when I make my big posts.

(Which I'm still working on - but it's a big topic so I'm still trying to figure out how to approach it).

But as a sneaky teaser:

Etanercept is a TNF-α antagonist; TNF-α being a cytokine created by white blood cells which is used to signal an inflammation response in the host.

So why does that help? Is Alzheimer's merely an inflammatory disease? And Etanercept turns that inflammation off, letting your body get back to business as usual?

Nope, that's not what's going on here... not entirely... Here's my hypothesis - you'll see my theme starting here:

The trick here is another part of the equation. Recent research has shown that Herpes Simplex Virus I is found in huge quantities in plaque riddled brain tissue in Alzheimer's patients.

Other recent research in mice shows that when the body has an inflammation response, it creates cytokines such as TNF-α - which cause the latent herpes viruses to re-activate.

So if HSV-1 is a primary cause of Alzheimer's, TNF-α increases its activity, and Etanercept decreases the amount of TNF-α in the bloodstream (decreasing its activity), then the case for HSV-1 being a cause of Alzheimer's is strengthened. And what's more, you can help it along with other drugs and nutritional supplements that are antagonistic towards herpes viruses.

So why is Etanercept prescribed for rheumatoid arthritis? The answer lies with another herpes-class of virus - Varicella Zoster. And that part I'll save for the series...

Meanwhile, my suggestion and recommendation to anyone dealing with this, and doctors treating it:

Supplement any treatment with Etanercept with Interferon-α/β, acyclovir (or valcylovir, or any of the other related antivirals), L-lysine supplements matched with an equal ratio of Vitamin C supplementation, and a low sugar (fructose, glucose, mannose) diet.

I'll explain more about why in coming posts. You can get L-lysine and Vitamin C over the counter. Most doctors would probably be willing to try acyclovir (Zovirax) or valcyclovir (Valtrex). Interferon may take a bigger push - in which case, give him the links in this article. They're listed at the bottom.

NOTE: I am NOT a doctor. Do not take any advice from this page without consulting with a certified physician. I'm just someone who's really good at Googling and building models.

Supporting Documentation:
ScienceDaily report on the use of Etanercept as a miracle Alzheimer's cure
Herpes Simplex 1 and Alzheimer's link
Latent HSV-1 infection reactivation due to TNF-α
Journal of NeuroInflammation paper on the use of Etanercept (the ScienceDaily report is based on this)