Hi Their,

If your up for it you might want to have Mycoplasmas ruled out. Maybe it could help with some of the SX you have. Peace, Roz xxx

AIDS

The role of mycoplasmas in accelerating the progression of AIDS could not have begun under more baffling and circuitous conditions. A virus-like agent that arose through transfection of NIH 3T3 cells with DNA from Kaposi sarcoma tissues of AIDS patients was later shown to be M. fermentans. The spotted history of M. fermentans in rheumatoid arthritis and leukemia and its frequent contamination of cell cultures, along with its contemporary link to AIDS, have been considerable impediments to overcome in its elevation to pathogenic status. However, careful and convincing independent studies by several laboratories have implicated M. fermentans as a cause of systemic infections and organ failure in AIDS patients (4,74). The isolation of M. fermentans from blood and urine samples of HIV-infected persons, its detection by PCR and immunohistochemistry in multiple tissue sites at various stages of AIDS, and its ability to stimulate CD4+ lymphocytes and other immunomodulatory activities implicate this Mycoplasma species as a cofactor in AIDS. Consistent with this possibility, M. fermentans has been shown to act synergistically with HIV to enhance cytopathic effects on human CD4+ lymphocytes. Coincident with these studies, a new Mycoplasma species, Mycoplasma penetrans, also has emerged as a potential cofactor in AIDS progression (75,76). Its isolation almost exclusively from the urine of HIV-infected patients, the extraordinarily high prevalence of antibodies against this mycoplasma in HIV-infected patients and not in HIV-seronegative persons, and its capacity to invade target cells and activate the immune system of HIV-infected patients at various stages of disease correlate with a synergistic role with HIV. Other mycoplasmas, including M. genitalium and Mycoplasma pirum, have also been isolated from AIDS patients and implicated as potential cofactors. However, the proposed role of mycoplasmas as infectious agents and cofactors in AIDS-related disorders still remains a hypothesis without definitive proof. If cofactors of HIV are essential to the development of late stages of HIV-mediated disease, mycoplasmas possess all the prerequisite properties of the consummate helper. Their ability to establish covert or overt chronic and persistent infections with concomitant activation of the immune system, stimulation of cytokine production, and induction of oxidative stress correlate with increased HIV replication and disease progression. Are mycoplasmas irrelevant to AIDS, or are the clinical and microbiological correlations sufficient to imply intimate relationships between HIV and mycoplasmas, especially as the infected host undergoes immunologic distress?

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol3no1/baseman.htm