The Mycoplasma Myth: More Setbacks for CFS/GWS Research

THE MYCOPLASMA MYTH

MORE SETBACKS FOR CFS/GWS RESEARCH

By Howard Urnovitz

You can find just about anything on health these days on the internet. The hard part is to decipher some of the complex medical issues, particularly when it comes to many of the chronic diseases. For the most part, their origin and the nature of their progression remain a mystery.

I’m concerned about some of the online misinformation about chronic diseases. I’m particularly bugged to read about how germs are the cause of just about every mystery ailment. Yes, germs are important and we can see evidence of this in the acute microbial diseases that have caused so much death and illness, but when it comes to some new mystery ailments — Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), AIDS and Gulf War Syndrome (GWS) to name only a few — we need to reformulate some of our knee-jerk thinking on how disease begins and develops in the body.

The catastrophic failure of the most powerful medical agency in the world, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), to solve or even provide some clues to these mysterious ailments has given us a powerful take-away message:

Medicine lacks the proper technologies and protocols to solve the mysteries.

Those of you who have monitored the stories of fraud, abuse, waste and mismanagement of federal funding by HHS and its grant recipients are well aware that just about every report in the medical literature covered by a poorly-educated mainstream press is nothing more than damage control for a medical structure that just does not "get it," and it is therefore impeding development of technology to "get it". Meanwhile, researchers resort to fitting the old square pegs into the new round holes, while patients suffer.

Which brings up one issue that is high on my list of "Not Getting It." And that’s the fascination with mycoplasma (the smallest organism without cell walls that can reproduce itself).

On the internet these days, there is a lot of chatter about how mycoplasma is the cause of CFS and GWS. Some of this stems from expectations that a multimillion dollar military study will soon be published that drives the point home. The resulting message is that these syndromes can be treated effectively with antibiotics.

Here’s what you need to watch for: research on mycoplasma has used a technique called PCR. This test only detects the presence of a gene sequence signal in a sample. Validation experiments are then required to determine if the gene sequence correlates with the actual presence of a microorganism. If the organism is present, researchers must then determine its quantity. Any respectable scientific journal, such as those published by the American Society for Microbiology, requires such validations.

Lesser journals have published the mycoplasma/CFS/GWS papers without appropriate validation. The data from these papers merely reveal the presence of PCR-detectable sequences in approximately half the individuals' test results, yet refer to these results as "systemic mycoplasma infection." Not only do these studies fail to find mycoplasma sequences in a large majority of the patients, they fail to report on any such presence of the microorganism itself. Such studies are a setback to CFS/GWS research.

Healthcare workers rely on the integrity of medical and scientific journals to supply them with well-vetted studies so that important medical decisions can be made. The publication of papers claiming to show that CFS and GWS patients suffer from systemic mycoplasma infections creates a false sense of comfort — and this leads to the prescription of antibiotics or combinations of antibiotics. This is not only outrageous, but it amounts to medical negligence.

Furthermore, now we have doctors on the internet making their colleagues aware of a new "mycoplasma load test" that can be used as a marker for dishing out antibiotics.

It’s a load alright!

So let the patient beware!

A more technical discussion of the mycoplasma myth can be found on chronicillnet.org.