by-cancer-drug.html
Chronic fatigue syndrome eased by cancer drug
20:00 19 October 2011 by Andy Coghlan
An anti-cancer drug could hold the key to treating chronic fatigue
syndrome (CFS). Symptoms of the disease eased in 10 of 15 patients
given rituximab, an anti-lymphoma drug.
Rituximab works by destroying white blood cells that make antibodies,
called B cells. The results of the trial therefore strongly suggest
that these white blood cells might be involved in causing CFS =96 a
disorder also known as "yuppie flu" or myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME),
and one that has so far defied explanation.
The research was jointly led by =D8ystein Fluge and Olav Mella at the
Haukeland University Hospital in Bergen, Norway. Their team discovered
by accident that rituximab might work against CFS after seeing
symptoms ease in a patient who had both lymphoma and CFS.
"We think it affects all symptoms [of CFS], so it must touch the
central pathological mechanism causing the disease," Fluge says.
Two of the 15 people in the trial appear to have completely recovered
since they first received the drug three years ago. "Those two are
both back at work," Mella says.
Dramatic results
"It's the most encouraging drug result so far in the history of this
disease," according to Charles Shepherd, medical adviser to the UK ME
Association. "Although it's a small trial, it's produced dramatic
results."
The researchers say that following two doses of the drug being given
in the first two weeks of the trial, there was a lag of three to eight
months before symptoms began to subside. They say this delayed
response tallies with the idea that CFS is caused by autoantibodies =96
antibodies, made by B cells, that mistakenly attack the body's own
tissues.
Rituximab is itself an antibody designed to target and destroy B
cells. Mella says that all the B cells are gone within two weeks or so
of the treatment, but autoantibodies typically survive in the body for
another two or three months. "Washing out these antibodies is the most
probable explanation for the time lag in benefits," he says.
The researchers found no trace of XMRV, a mouse leukaemia virus once
implicated as a possible cause of CFS. The virus has now been
virtually eliminated as a possible cause.
Blind alley
"We looked as hard as we could for it, by several methods, but the
search was negative," Fluge says. "We think suggestions it was XMRV
[causing CFS] have turned out to be a blind alley, caused by
contamination of samples."
Last month, one of the authors of the 2009 paper that implicated XMRV
retracted his data from that study after acknowledging that the virus
was present through contamination.
"XMRV is dead, a sad and disappointing story that raised a lot of
false hopes for patients," says Shepherd. He adds that it is important
not to raise hopes again by over-hyping the rituximab results. "We're
still a long way from making this drug more widely available, but if
someone wants to mount a UK trial, we'd look at that," he said.
Encouraged by the extended remission of two of the people in the
trial, the Norwegian researchers are now checking whether further,
periodic doses of rituximab could permanently keep the symptoms of CFS
at bay. Mella says it is possible that the five who saw no benefits
from the trial might have done so eventually if they had received
further doses.
Journal reference: PLoS ONE, in press
---------------------------------------------
Send posts to CO-CURE@listserv.nodak.edu
Unsubscribe at http://www.co-cure.org/unsub.htm
Select list topic options at http://www.co-cure.org/topics.htm
---------------------------------------------
Co-Cure's purpose is to provide information from across the spectrum of
opinion concerning medical, research and political aspects of ME/CFS and/or
FMS. We take no position on the validity of any specific scientific or
political opinion expressed in Co-Cure posts, and we urge readers to
research the various opinions available before assuming any one
interpretation is definitive. The Co-Cure website <www.co-cure.org> has a
link to our complete archive of posts as well as articles of central
importance to the issues of our community.
---------------------------------------------
