Study on whey and HHV6, Myco, and Chalmydia P.

[Guest guest]

Steve, you asked about the study I mentioned in an earlier post in which

patients who tested positive for HHV6, Mycoplasma, and/or Chlamydia took

undenatured whey for six months and then tested negative. As for as I know

there are no plans to publish the study. It was a very small one conducted by

Dr. Cheney.

I actually first read about it here on this list. Sue graciously posted the

transcripts of a presentation and a workshop that Cheney gave a year ago in

Florida. I'll quote the relevant sections below. There should be more data in a

few months, since the current ImmunoPro study includes testing for the critters

before beginning the whey. If a patient is positive, they will of course be

tested after treatment.

Quote from Cheney presentation February 1999:

.. . . immune-activation states can also induce the activation of endogenous

microbes in the presence of glutathione deficiency. And that might explain why

in this immune-activation state that we call Chronic Fatigue Syndrome you see a

lot of endogenous viral activation such as EBV, CMV, HHV6, mycoplasma

incognitus, chlamydia pneumonia, candida, and on and on and on. You see the

activation of this microbial ecology, and why is this happening? It could be

that it happens because cytokines in excess stimulate these organisms,

especially in the presence of glutathione deficiency. The converse is true,

however. In the presence of good glutathione levels, it's very difficult for

that to happen.

.. . . Conclusions from all of this are: Glutathione has potent anti-viral

properties--if you raise the glutathione level you can stop the replication of

most any, at least, intracellular pathogen. Chronic fatigue syndrome patients

are glutathione deficient. Glutathione deficiency itself has a potent pro-viral

effect. That is, not only does (high?) glutathione levels tend to act as an

anti-viral, but glutathione deficiency produces a pro-viral effect. It can

actually augment viral replication. Augment it from the case of toxins, toxins

could augment viral replication and also cytokines themselves. So

immune-activation states would itself augment these things.

.. . . I'm trying to set the stage for how important it is to address this

glutathione defect. It could be THE major issue in this illness. Maybe not so

much in the beginning, but over time become the major issue. Because we're

dealing with a sub-group of people who have cellular detox failure and all that

that causes. Because if you have cell detox failure, you become a canary to your

environment. . . . If you get a glutathione defect, then you become

vulnerable to your own cell toxicity, specifically the portal circulation.

We found out that when you give oral reduced glutathione, it helps a little bit

in some people, especially these pressure toxic headaches they get. But when you

keep raising the dose, they

actually get sick again, and it was never a very impressive response. When we

tried NAC we saw some evidence of toxcicity. In the use of NAC--I'm concerned

about high-dose NAC in this disease. I think it may be toxic. We tried other

methods to affect glutathione. Nothing seemed to be working.

Then we got wind of . . . undenatured whey protein, lightly denatured to

preserve the peptide action of this milk protein. It's concentrated to about 90

percent protein and it's very, very lightly denatured. In fact, the more lightly

they denature it, the better the action appears to be. And the more they

denature it, the less active it appears to be. In fact, if you denature it

completely, down to its constituent amino acids, it really doesn't work well at

all.

People who normally have milk protein allergy seem to tolerate this, by and

large. Not 100 percent, but by and large.

This is the data from a six month study. There were eight people entered into

the study, seven of them completed the study. We got data on seven of them. One

dropped out at three months for a reason involved with the design of the study.

(Note from Carol: the patient dropped out when the study protocol randomly

required half of the participants to drop to one packet a day at the half-way

point. He was improving so much on two packets a day that he refused to drop

back, so he quit the study.) The first three months of the study we treated

with two packets a day, and then the second three months, half were randomized

to two packets a day and half were randomized to one packet a day. We wanted to

see if you could tell a difference clinically or by other means between one

packet a day versus two packets a day.

We did this because there was some indication that the more you treat with this,

the higher the dose, the better the effect. When you look at the group that goes

from two packs a day to one pack a day, you can see this nice dip where they

started going back up (in their urine lipid peroxides). Suggesting that one pack

a day doesn't work very well. (He's referring to a slide of a chart here, I

think.)

By the way, you can extend this--there are people, I've discovered since the

study was done, that do really well on three packs a day and not very well at

all on two. (Note from Carol: Cheney told me in October that he has patients on

4, 5, and even 6 packets a day!!!) So clearly there is a dose response issue.

Two packs a day would probably be my recommended starting dose, but I wouldn't

hesitate to go up if it seemed like it wasn't working.

This is the exciting stuff. We wanted to see not only if this product improved

glutathione functionality, which it did, but we also wanted to see if it knocked

out micro-organisms, like the PNS article said it would. Chlamydia pneumoniae

is an intracellular pathogen. It's a common cause of hospital-acquired

pneumonia. It ubiquitously infects the population, but seems to activate under

certain conditions. And if it activates, some of the clinical conditions of this

organism are chronic sinusitis, pharyngitis, and laryngitis. But it also gets

into the central nervous system.

In a study published by a neurologist out of Vanderbilt showed that chlyamdia

pneumoniae may be a very important pathogen in multiple sclerosis. Indeed, data

they shared with me recently (and this is coming to publication soon) showed

that 80 percent of the cerebral spinal fluid of MS patients is actively infected

with this organism. Versus 15 percent of other neurological diseases that are

not MS. In a journal-published article on neurology, aggressive treatment for

chlyamdia pneumoniae rapidly reversed an acute exacerbation of multiple

sclerosis.

So we measured IgM levels for this pathogen at Vanderbilt. Most laboratory

measurements of this organism are not very good, so this is a research grade

assessment, and probably may not generalize to the run-of-the-mill types of

tests that you might get in your local labs. But IgM elevations of 1 to 1600 (?)

dilutions is evident of significant active infection with this organism. Six

months later, it just wiped it out. IgM just fell to normal levels. It didn't

really matter whether you were taking one pack a day or two packs a day. Just

wiped it out. Makes you wonder what this might do for MS. Think about that.

We also looked at mycoplasma fermentans and mycoplasma penetrans. Both of these

pathogens have been linked to Gulf War Syndrome. They've been linked to chronic

fatigue syndrome. Again, they may be a relatively ubiquitous mycoplasma species,

intracellular, and can cause a variety of problems when active. Again, by PCR

done in Irvine, California. We were able to show that this product also wiped

out mycoplasma incognitus and penetrans.

Then we looked at HHV6. It was a little mixed here. We tested three people.

By the way, this study was designed to do some microbial testing on everybody,

but not everything on everybody. The patients were allowed to pick and choose

depending on what we had in their chart before. We weren't able to do everything

on everybody because they were paying for this.

We did HHV6 rapid culture testing, which is a technique developed by a company

in Wisconsin. This particular culture technique uses an intermediate (captures

fiberglass?) cell line, so that you are positive only if you are really

infected, so it reduces false positives to zero. That is, under these

conditions, all normal people are negative. You have to do that because HHV,

both A and B strains, are relatively ubiquitous. Under these conditions, we had

two positives and one negative at beginning of the study. The person on two

packs a day went to zero culture (negative); the person on one pack a day stayed

positive. The person that was negative stayed negative. Suggesting that maybe

this isn't as good against viruses as it is against bacteria, but at two packs a

day it might be good against viruses. Again, the numbers (of participants) are

small.

But to me, the satisfaction of this is tremendous because I'm always faced in

this disease population--well, are they sick from EBV? or are they sick from

HHV6? or are they sick from mycoplasma incognitus? or are they sick from c

pneumoniae? And the [traditional] treatment for mycoplasma and c pneumoniae is

18 months of triple drug antibiotic therapy. And if we're wrong on this issue,

we've wiped out their gut flora and leave them a gut ecology cripple for the

rest of their lives. So now what we have is a nice way to address almost any

micro-organism that happens to be there. Just as the PNS article suggested.

(Cheney is referencing a paper mentioned earlier in the presentation. He said

" To me, this is a most extraordinary paper, published by Falci, an

expert and head of NIAID and our leader in the HIV world at NIH. But he's also a

glutathione expert. And he showed in this paper, published in PNS in 1991, that

glutathione is an impressive anti-viral weapon. You can flat-line HIV growth

simply by raising glutathione in-vitro in the cell culture. " I don't know what

journal PNS is.)

If anyone is interested in the full transcript of the presentation and workshop,

I can easily send them out as email attachments. My virus scan is up to date -

I promise! :-)

Take care. Carol

[Guest guest]

Thanks, I've added to website http://www.folkarts.com/idef/cheney_whey.htm

(assuming no problems doing so - as usual with Cheney's stuff)

Ken Lassesen

2 @ 2 ft PWC, 2 @ 4ft PWC

2 ft PWC: http://www.folkarts.com/idef/

4 ft PWC: http://corgi.folkarts.com/

Fax: (520) 832-6836 ICQ #: 2122097 (Netmeeting too)

Study on whey and HHV6, Myco, and Chalmydia P.

Fr

Quote from Cheney presentation February 1999:

. .

[Guest guest]

Sheri, I would suggest that you print out for your doctor the physician's

section and the explanation of how the rapid culture test works (two

different sections of website) from www.hhv6.com (Or have him go there to

read it if you don't have a printer) Wisconsin Viral Research Group is a

highly respected laboratory.

[Guest guest]

Hello Carol,

I am so grateful you posted this. I'd read it and being trying for

months to re-find it!

I would LOVE to have the full article for myself and to take it to my

doc who has problems believing any HHV6 test could ever be accurate....

Thank you so much, Sheri

[Guest guest]

Dear ITP: I just joined the group. Any chance of updating me on the stuff below?

Inthepresent@... wrote:

> From: Inthepresent@...

>

> Sheri, I would suggest that you print out for your doctor the physician's

> section and the explanation of how the rapid culture test works (two

> different sections of website) from www.hhv6.com (Or have him go there to

> read it if you don't have a printer) Wisconsin Viral Research Group is a

> highly respected laboratory.

>

> ---------------------------

[Guest guest]

Hi Kathleen! Wisconsin Viral Research (not sure if that's exact name but

it's close) does testing for ACTIVE hhv6 infection, which is found in

approximately 0% of the general population but is found in a significant

percentage of people with cfids, m.s. and aids. Sheri was asking for info

for her doctor on the ability to definitively test for the presence of an

active hhv6 infection. I think he probably had expressed skepticism because

hhv6 is so common that most people will test positive for the ANTIBODIES to

hhv6, indicating that at some point in their lives they have been exposed to

hhv6. This test for the ANTIGEN, i.e., the actual virus, not antibodies to

it, is relatively new. I think the Wisconsin people are actually the ones

who developed this rapid culture test. They are a reputable outfit, not

flaky in the least. Hope this is helpful! (aka " ITP " !)

[Guest guest]

Hi ,

It's unfortunate they do not accept Medicare, the test is expensivie. I have

emailed them for an update to see if they now accept Medicare.

Al

Re: Study on whey and HHV6, Myco, and Chalmydia

P.

> From: Inthepresent@...

>

> Hi Kathleen! Wisconsin Viral Research (not sure if that's exact name but

> it's close) does testing for ACTIVE hhv6 infection, which is found in

> approximately 0% of the general population but is found in a significant

> percentage of people with cfids, m.s. and aids. Sheri was asking for info

> for her doctor on the ability to definitively test for the presence of an

> active hhv6 infection. I think he probably had expressed skepticism

because

> hhv6 is so common that most people will test positive for the ANTIBODIES

to

> hhv6, indicating that at some point in their lives they have been exposed

to

> hhv6. This test for the ANTIGEN, i.e., the actual virus, not antibodies

to

> it, is relatively new. I think the Wisconsin people are actually the ones

> who developed this rapid culture test. They are a reputable outfit, not

> flaky in the least. Hope this is helpful! (aka " ITP " !)

>

> ---------------------------