Dr. Roger Mazlin's radio show on WEVD, 1050am, New York, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Show, January 4, 1998, with guest Dr. Garth Nicolson. The following was transcribed by Carolyn Viviani.
Dr. Mazlin -- Dr. Garth L. Nicolson is the Chief Officer of the Institute for Molecular Medicine in Huntington Beach, California and as well, he is Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston. He's going to be talking to us about something very important for the 90's, the new emerging infectious disease, which is Mycoplasma infection. What is this organism, the Mycoplasma all about?
Dr. Nicolson -- The reason that this is important to patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Fibromyalgia Syndrome or Gulf War Illness is that we found that 50-60% of the patients that have these syndromes have infections, chronic infections that are the underlying cause of a lot of their morbidity or their illness and the evidence for that is that we can find these micro-organisms deep inside the white blood cells in the blood and they're systemic. They go to all the tissues of the body and they cause all these complex signs and symptoms that occur all over the body and we know them collectively as these names like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Fibromyalgia Syndrome, but the important thing is that once we can identify if these chronic infections are there, a patient can be treated. We have patients that have been sick with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Fibromyalgia Syndrome for decades and they have not really received an adequate diagnosis. Yes, we know they had the syndrome but we didn't know what the underlying causes of the syndrome is, we feel, are these chronic infections and once they can be identified these patients can be treated. And we have patients that are now recovering after years of illness. They're getting their health back. It's a slow process of recovery but they are recovering.
Dr. Mazlin -- What type of illnesses or syndromes are associated with Mycoplasma infection?
Dr. Nicolson -- Well, Mycoplasma first are a very simple subclass of bacteria. They don't have the rigid cell wall like most bacteria and they have usually less genetic information inside them and because of that they have to grow associated with cells in the case the Mycoplasma that invades, for example, mammals or us, and either they have to grow asociated with the cells or inside the cells in our tissues. So they really don't do well outside the body. They're not viruses because they have the ability to self-replicate but they're very fastidious, that is, they require a lot of metabolites themselves. So these types of infections have to be associated very closely with cells or tissues and when they get into the body they can penetrate, many of them, into virtually any tissue or cell. Now there are about 50 different types of Mycoplasma so we concentrate only on about 6 and these 6 that are known to cause human diseases and these 6 are very interesting, because in the case of a very specialized type of illness, like Gulf War illness, we find principally one species of Mycoplasma and you have to realize the Gulf War Illness started in 1991 and a lot of people came home. Now we have over 100,000 veterans of Desert Storm that are sick and if you count their family members it's probably double that, so these diseases are contageous, although they are not widly contageous, they can be passed at a very slow rate between members of the same family is the usual way it's passed. Once they're passed to another patient, that patient will slowly start to have signs and symptoms that we see in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, and Gulf War Illness. So what we have found is that if these chronic infections are the underlying reasons and there could be many reasons that people have these chronic illnesses, if they're chronic infections that are involved, once these are indentified, then we can prescribe the correct antibiotics to treat them and it's a slow process but people can recover.
Dr. Mazlin -- I wanted to mention that information with regard to your institute can be obtained through your web site. Talk to us a little bit about how treatable are these diseases.
Dr. Nicolson -- Well, you know these illnesses, these syndromes, they're very complex and they often have a number of underlying reasons for the illness. We've concentrated on illnesses that are caused by infections. These are chronic infections that can be identified in about 60% of Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia patients.
