Thu, 15 Feb 2001 

"Dr. Richard L. Bruno" <CFSENG@AOL.COM>


I have received some questions as a result of my recent post to Co-Cure on CFS vs PPS
and OPV which I thought might be of interest to the Co-Cure readers.

Question: "What, specifically, was it from Sabin's 1947 data that suggests that some
of the people with ME/CFS may be survivors of nonparalytic polio? Are there research
reports available online?"

Answer: They are not available on line.  I went through the Sabin Archive in
Cincinnati.  Take a look at the non-paralytic polio papers and the "Parallels"
between polio and CFS paper at:

http://members.aol.com/harvestctr/pps/lib2.html


Question: "And what about those people who developed the disease as teenagers in the
1990s (and who weren't around in the 1950s)?  If any of them have NPP, would they
have contracted it from the older patients, or from vaccines, or from some other
source?"

Answer: They would not have had polio at all.  If a virus caused their CFS, it would
have been from some other source.  Our best guess as a cause is another enterovirus
very similar to the poliovirus, e.g., Coxsackie B4, that can cause brain and spinal
cord lesions identical to those caused by the poliovirus.  Polio only means gray in
Latin, referring to damage to unmyelinated neurons. Poliovirus causes "polio," but so
do other viruses, e.g., Enterovirus 71 causing "polio" in Brazil.


Question: "Is there a way to test for NPP in today's patients?"

Answer: You can do an EMG, where needles are inserted into muscles, to look for
"silent" denervation.  But EMG can give false negatives even in polio survivors.  We
have found MRI and hormonal correlates of PPS fatigue but they are identical to the
findings s in CFS!


Question: "Would vaccine programs in place since the 1950s have given everyone so
many antibodies to polio that such testing would be futile?"

Answer: Probably.  By if one had a "natural" poliovirus infection their antibody
titre might be higher than if they only had the vaccine.

Hope this helps!

Dick Bruno