Marek's disease and humans

[redranger209]

Dang it Kiki, now I have to pay for a 100 dollar blood test from uc Davis to make sure I don’t have mareks...

 

[Tesumph]

So it infects humans, but doesn’t affect them? Like blackhead with chickens? All of those .gov pages are confusing as heck.

Back in the 90’s it was suspected that MS (multiple sclerosis) was caused by seabirds because of the high instance of MS along a particular coastline, and it was theoretically linked with Marek’s disease. This has since been disproved.

In an earlier report (2001), Marek’s was found in a percent of human serum samples but it caused no issues (it is a host specific virus). There was also no difference in samples taken between chicken farmers vs. office workers (exposure doesn’t matter).

In another study (2003), absolutely no traces of Marek’s could be found in exposed human plasma, despite being able to consistently find and diagnose it in the plasma of exposed chickens.
I did not read through the procedures of every study, but that’s what I summarized.

 

[Tesumph]

I'm deeply disturbed by this. Not because of the potential spread to humans. It bothers me that the current method of vaccination for chickens is more of a problem than a cure.
https://veterinaryresearch.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13567-016-0404-3

Although, I find it interesting that there is a disparity in information regarding whether marek's can be spread to humans already. Maybe I'm missing something? Confirmed studies relate that twenty percent of tested human plasma shows MDV DNA.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11125176

I had no idea that MDV was being investigated as a source for MS in humans. Cool.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12791859

"Our results conØict with those of a recent report
in which MDV DNA was not detected in leukocyte DNA from
patients suffering from multiple sclerosis (Hennig
et al
., 1998).
However, the previous study used the TaqMan Øuorogenic
system. Therefore, as the authors themselves suggested, their
negative results may be due to there being only a small number
of MDV genome copies in the blood of the patients, below the
detection limit of the TaqMan method (Hennig
et al., 1998)." http://www.microbiologyresearch.org...est&checksum=50EFBA131DB63228CD1EF024966AD05B

Ah, so that's what I was missing. One lab used a method that they admitted wasn't sensitive enough to detect infection. Ok, so.... marek's may already exist in humans? And they've studied if it's related to MS and cancer????

I'm going to stop reading now. Thank you for making sure that I don't sleep tonight.

The 2001 study found MDV in human serum but with no correlation to age, gender, or exposure to chickens. I suspect it’s just like every other herpes virus: it could lie dormant and do nothing in a body, but if it is in the correct host it can “flare up.”
The 2003 study found no traces of MDV in human plasma.

 

[dotporter]

Dang my slow internet. Read through all of the responses that happened while I was busy reading. I agree that human exposure isn't terribly frightening.

Being completely serious on the topic, it bothers me immensely that the method of vaccination causes more of an issue than it solves. And, the newer method of vaccination uses live turkey herpes.

To me, the current method is like voluntarily creating typhoid mary. Oh, this one is immune, but still spreading viral material. Ummmmm.... no thanks?

 

[Tesumph]

Dang my slow internet. Read through all of the responses that happened while I was busy reading. I agree that human exposure isn't terribly frightening.

Being completely serious on the topic, it bothers me immensely that the method of vaccination causes more of an issue than it solves. And, the newer method of vaccination uses live turkey herpes.

To me, the current method is like voluntarily creating typhoid mary. Oh, this one is immune, but still spreading viral material. Ummmmm.... no thanks?

Agreed, the current Marek’s vaccination is concerning, to say the least.

 

[Pugsabi]

You're ruining my life Kiki! You know my insurance will consider this a pre-existing condition! I can feel my hypochondria kicking in.

 

[dotporter]

You're ruining my life Kiki! You know my insurance will consider this a pre-existing condition! I can feel my hypochondria kicking in.

 

[Glitterchicks]

I'm deeply disturbed by this. Not because of the potential spread to humans. It bothers me that the current method of vaccination for chickens is more of a problem than a cure.
https://veterinaryresearch.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13567-016-0404-3

Although, I find it interesting that there is a disparity in information regarding whether marek's can be spread to humans already. Maybe I'm missing something? Confirmed studies relate that twenty percent of tested human plasma shows MDV DNA.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11125176

I had no idea that MDV was being investigated as a source for MS in humans. Cool.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12791859

"Our results conØict with those of a recent report
in which MDV DNA was not detected in leukocyte DNA from
patients suffering from multiple sclerosis (Hennig
et al
., 1998).
However, the previous study used the TaqMan Øuorogenic
system. Therefore, as the authors themselves suggested, their
negative results may be due to there being only a small number
of MDV genome copies in the blood of the patients, below the
detection limit of the TaqMan method (Hennig
et al., 1998)." http://www.microbiologyresearch.org...est&checksum=50EFBA131DB63228CD1EF024966AD05B

Ah, so that's what I was missing. One lab used a method that they admitted wasn't sensitive enough to detect infection. Ok, so.... marek's may already exist in humans? And they've studied if it's related to MS and cancer????

I'm going to stop reading now. Thank you for making sure that I don't sleep tonight.

This is all so fascinating!

 

[Glitterchicks]

Dang it Kiki, now I have to pay for a 100 dollar blood test from uc Davis to make sure I don’t have mareks...

 

[Glitterchicks]

I want to catch up on all of these articles but I have to put it on pause for the night.

One more https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC156508/
"In a recent report, Laurent et al. (7) described the detection of MDV DNA in 41 (20%) of 202 human serum samples. However, they did not find any difference in the prevalence of MDV DNA between a group of individuals constantly exposed to poultry and another group of office staff. Simultaneously, they detected MDV DNA from five serum samples from chickens with clinical signs of MD and provided the alignment of the MDV gD sequences from all 46 serum samples. That report prompted us to perform a new study on the question of the possible spread of MDV to humans, although, so far, it has generally been accepted that MDV is strongly cell associated. The aim of this study was to investigate if we can confirm the detection of MDV DNA in chickens and humans if we use plasma as the source for nucleic acid isolation."

So is it possible that these workers who were infected were distributing the vaccine, thus, being exposed to a live strain able to infect humans via this vaccine?