Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: What If It's Not XMRV?

The words "belief" and "hope" don't play too well in science, but patients and researchers are only human, after all. Even diehard skeptics like us keep wishing that XMRV turns out to be the viral key to CFS/ME. Just last August we posted "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Viral Link Confirmed." Then came the debate we promised. To ground this complex subject in personal terms, we recommend two stories published this month.

In "Virology: Fighting for a cause," Nature News reports how Judy Mikovitz, the researcher who first proposed the xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) may cause chronic fatigue syndrome, is now torn between doubting colleagues and believing patients. Mikovitz is a viral immunologist at the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease (WPI) in Reno, Nevada.

On About.com, Adrienne Dellwo simply asks, "What If XMRV Isn't Linked to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?" and speaks directly to patients trying to make sense of contradicting studies and lofty scientific arguments. In the comments section you'll feel the emotional investment patients have made in this work.

It seems to us Mikovitz and her WPI team are holding up rather well under very close scrutiny. We'll stick by our HyperbaricLink CFS page, where we conclude that "confirmed association with [XMRV], previously associated with prostrate cancer, may open a new era of CFS research, diagnosis, and treatment." Nor do we find any new reason to champion the use of hyperbaric oxygen in this fascinating area of clinical research.

O2.0 is the news blog of HyperbaricLink, the independent web guide to hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Harch Hyperbarics Warns Patients About HBOT Fraudsters

HyperbaricLink did not receive this important February 14 announcement until Harch Hyperbarics joined the twitterverse earlier this week. We reprint the blogpost here in its entirety:

BEWARE ALL PATIENTS SEEKING Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT)! With increasing regularity hyperbaric facilities, their staff, and physicians have been marketing and announcing their services with statements to patients claiming training by Dr. Harch, consulting services with Dr. Harch, use of "Harch Protocols" only, business and collaborative relationships with Dr. Harch, etc. All of these claims are FRAUDULENT. All contractual relationships with Dr. Harch will be listed on HBOT.COM website only and/or links provided to the contractors from our website. Any representation of a business relationship with Dr. Harch not mentioned on this website is a misrepresentation and attempt to defraud the patient. We would request your reporting this to us since patients have been harmed by individuals practicing medicine without a license. Clinics are luring patients for hyperbaric oxygen therapy without proper training or knowledge claiming safety and effectiveness based on a relationship with Dr. Harch. These clinics are claiming detailed knowledge of the practice of hyperbaric medicine, in particular, the neurological application of HBOT based on a professional or personal relationship with Dr Harch. Please do not hesitate to call us for clarification. Dr Harch's private office (504)309-4948 or (504)304-5877.

We run across similarly deceptive practices all the time. HBOT fraudsters are some of the most active healthcare marketers on the web, and we work hard to keep them out of our directory of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Treatment Centers. More soon to follow when we publish our Editorial Policies and Principles.

O2.0 is the news blog of HyperbaricLink, the independent web guide to hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Hello, Cleveland: HBOT Gets The Plain Deal

What most hyperbaric medical communities wouldn't give to get the positive, instructive, and complete press coverage The Plain Dealer dealt Cleveland this week. Reporter Diane Suchetka focuses squarely on the unmet clinical needs and patient benefits of hyperbaric oxygen therapy for nonhealing chronic wounds. The article acquainted us with a handful of treatment centers in the Cleveland Clinic hospital network. We also filled in one odd moment in HBOT history:

In 1928, Cleveland became home to a one-of-a-kind, 900-ton steel sphere, called the Cunningham Sanitarium, which used oxygen therapy to treat diabetes, high blood pressure and other illnesses. Its leader, Dr. Orval J. Cunningham of Kansas City, Mo., had the five-story steel ball—which contained 40 rooms and 40 baths -- built on Lake Shore Boulevard at East 185th Street for $1 million—that's $12.9 million in today's money. 

Finally! The excuse we've been waiting for to post this wonderful old photo of what some call the Hyperbaric Hotel.

O2.0 is the news blog of HyperbaricLink, the independent web guide to hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Brain Wars: Latest From The NPR-ProPublica TBI Series

Spare us your opinions about public funding for National Public Radio and we'll spare you ours, but we must recommend with enthusiasm the latest installment in the excellent NPR and ProPublica series Brain Wars: How The Military Is Failing Its Wounded. The video is dramatic and moving beyond words. See our July 2010 post covering a previous installment, with news about how HBOT may help some wounded soldiers suffering traumatic brain injury (TBI) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We are currently awaiting results from ongoing clinical trials and the announcement of newly funded research to begin this year.

O2.0 is the news blog of HyperbaricLink, the independent web guide to hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Crush Injury: Life And Limbs To Save In Japan

Haiti, Chile, New Zealand—emerging from the rubble of recent quake disasters was a signature wound, the crush injury. Last weekend's Australian recounts one on-the-spot amputation in Christchurch like a scene straight out of 127 Hours. Too often an improvised amputation presents the only choice to save the life of a victim whose crushed muscles and tissues release toxins and particles that quickly overwhelm the organs, leading to profound shock and death. From the Australian article:

Physician Dario Gonzalez, a disaster rescue veteran and member of the New York Fire Department search and rescue squad, was among those who flew to Haiti to help rescue survivors. In a paper he notes that up to 40 per cent of survivors pulled out of collapsed, multi-storey buildings suffer from crush injuries. He also estimates that 20 per cent of the 242,769 deaths from the 1976 magnitude 7.6 earthquake in Tangshen, China, were caused by crush syndrome.

Kidney dialysis can be lifesaving if delivered soon enough. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy can help promote healing and save limbs over the longer term.

We're digging for more news on the ground from Japan, where so many precious hours have already passed and access to transportation, electricity, and healthcare must be difficult or impossible after such a powerful quake and tsunami.

O2.0 is the news blog of HyperbaricLink, the independent web guide to hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

HBOT For Radiation Injury Of No Use In Nuclear Disaster

Lest there be any confusion or spurious claims, let's remember: the demonstrated effectiveness of hyperbaric oxygen in treating delayed radiation injury is strictly limited to treating tissue damage caused by cancer therapy. HBOT is of no use to medical personnel caring today for the victims of acute radiation syndrome (ARS) in the communities surrounding the Fukushima and other nuclear power facilities in Japan.

Please join us in supporting the relief efforts of the American Red Cross. Text REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10.

O2.0 is the news blog of HyperbaricLink, the independent web guide to hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
 

TBI In The NFL Postscript: The CSTE Brain Bank

The Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy (CSTE) Brain Bank is affiliated with the Boston University Medical Center and the Sports Legacy Institute and is located at the Bedford Veterans Administration Medical Center in Bedford, Massachusetts.



O2.0 is the news blog of HyperbaricLink, the independent web guide to hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

TBI In The NFL: Now All You Have To Say Is "Duerson"

"Please, see that my brain is given to the NFL's brain bank," wrote the late Chicago Bears great Dave Duerson in his suicide note.

And with these words and a gunshot to the heart, to preserve his brain, Duerson shoves new rules and new helmets into a tough new perspective. That repeated concussions amount to traumatic brain injury (TBI) has long been known. As Dr Brian E. Moore summarizes in the Wicked Local Eastham, out of Cape Cod (Orleans), Massachusetts:

Duerson's suicide is one in a series of self-inflicted deaths by former football players, and it again raises the question of whether repeated traumatic brain damage, known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, has played a role in the depression or dementia from which many former football players suffer.

See also the excellent piece by Bill Dwyer of the Los Angeles Times. Since the league is looking into serious preventive efforts about 40 years too late, as Dwyer observes, effective treatment must be the focus for a few generations of NFL players. In these blogposts we have frequently covered the increased activity in clinical research on hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) for TBI. Mostly for soldiers.

Little did we realize so many casualties of Soldier Field and dozens of other stadiums might benefit, too.

O2.0 is the news blog of HyperbaricLink, the independent web guide to hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Regenerative Medicine Superstar Takes On Chronic Wounds

TED addicts and loyal followers of the science fiction-turned-fact world of regenerative medicine are all abuzz about the latest lecture by Dr Anthony Atala, Director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He "printed" a human kidney live on stage! Well, only if you believe everything you read in the newspaper and on Twitter. He actually printed a simple but exquisite 3D mold, and all week long we've been sending readers to the media correction posted on the Wake Forest website.

We're none the less thrilled about the promise of this emerging technology. And we're especially delighted there's a promising new application in chronic wounds, thermal burns, and skin grafts and flaps. Atala briefly explains around the 8:00 minute mark on the video below.

Surely medicine stands at the brink of a bold new era.



O2.0 is the news blog of HyperbaricLink, the independent web guide to hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Pioneering Frogman Invented, Named SCUBA

We missed the death notice last month of Christian Lambertsen, 93, the inventor and World War II military diver who made a name for himself and his self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. Actually he called the first SCUBA gear the Lambertsen underwater respiratory unit (LARU), 1942 patent drawing, right. Go see the vintage underwater film posted by The Atlantic.

Deeper, longer dives no doubt helped the Allied war effort. SCUBA also introduced the world to the pleasures of recreational diving and to the risk of decompression sickness (DCS), or the bends. Soon followed the rapid advancement of modern hyperbaric medicine.

Thumbs up, Mr Lambertsen. 

O2.0 is the news blog of HyperbaricLink, the independent web guide to hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

A Fondness for Antiques?

We're at a loss to explain it, but although our readers are unlikely to see a hyperbaric chamber on Antiques Roadshow, they seem to disproportionately favor obsolete technology. We'd like to make the case that while sentiment can play a role in hanging onto old furniture, it has no place in technology decisions.

The occasion for this missive is a campaign recently begun by Microsoft to reduce the use of Internet Explorer 6, an obsolete version of their web browser. Introduced ten years ago and no longer compliant with many web standards, Microsoft would like to lower IE6 usage to under 1% worldwide. In the U.S. usage currently stands at 2.9%.

We did some checking and found that among our site visitors using Internet Explorer, version 6 is used at a rate four times that of the national average. The chart at right shows the breakdown by version.

Interestingly, the rate doesn't seem to vary by region or any demographic figure available to us: it's the same in Utah as it is in Florida. Newer versions of Windows ship with newer versions of IE, so it's almost universally true that IE6 users are also using older versions of Windows.

While hardware and financial constraints might prevent people from upgrading their operating system to the latest version, Internet Explorer upgrades are free (as are the Firefox and Google Chrome browsers) and run on any version of Windows from Windows XP onward. Downloading and installing are easy.

If you're one of the laggards, or know someone who is, we appeal to you: even if you don't care if websites look the way they're supposed to--and if you're using IE6 they often won't--take an interest in your own security. IE6 has flaws that could compromise your private information.

Upgrade today. You can get it done during commercials or a coffee break. You'll be safer and the world (wide web) will look better.

Legendary Rock Bassist Mark Tulin Dies At USC Catalina

Mark "Professor Psychedelic" Tulin, 62, bass player with the influential '60s group The Electric Prunes and an experienced deep-sea diver, collapsed while performing volunteer work for the USC Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber in Avalon, California. Tributes are pouring in to the USC-CHC page on Facebook under the post:

It is with deep sadness and a very heavy heart that I inform you of the death of Mark Tulin. He collapsed today while helping out at the Avalon Underwater Clean-Up and had immediate response by Baywatch Avalon and Avalon Fire Department medics, but he could not be revived.

The USC chamber is an emergency facility for SCUBA divers suffering decompression sickness (DCS), or the bends.

Read more about Tulin's career with The Electric Prunes, including a trippy Mike Douglas Show video, at Rock Edition. More recently he played with Smashing Pumpkins, whose Billy Corgan remembers Tulin in his blog.

O2.0 is the news blog of HyperbaricLink, the independent web guide to hyperbaric oxygen therapy.