Stealth-adapted viruses

Stealth-adapted viruses are theoretical structurally altered viruses lacking the molecular components targeted by the cellular immune system. Missing antigenic proteins enable stealth viruses to escape recognition by the immune system. Atypically-structured cell-damaging viruses were initially proposed by W. John Martin, M.D., Ph.D., who introduced the term 'stealth viruses' to highlight their evasion of effective immune recognition.

Martin has hypothesized that stealth viruses are contributing to increasingly prevalent diseases, such as autism and learning disorders in children, chronic fatigue syndrome and mental illness in adults, and neurodegenerative illnesses in the elderly. His research has been controversial and has not been accepted by the scientific community.

Immune response
Martin's theory suggests the immune system ordinarily recognizes certain viral proteins that provide the antigens to be targeted by specific lymphocytes, leading to an inflammatory immune response. Only a very few proteins are involved in lymphocyte recognition of virally infected cells. Not all viruses produce recognizable antigens that, in turn, ordinarily trigger an adequate immune response. When these stealth viruses still retain the capacity to damage cells, they can potentially cause a persistent infection resulting in a prolonged illness. The viral nature of such an illness is usually overlooked because of the absence of overt inflammation.

Detection
According to Martin, stealth-adapted viruses can be most readily detected using specialized, semi-quantitative, viral culture methods developed and refined by Dr. Martin. Using these procedures, stealth viruses will typically induce a characteristic vacuolating cytopathic effect (CPE) in cultures of human and animal-derived cells. Stealth virus infected cultures can be distinguished from cultures of conventional herpes viruses, adenoviruses, entero-viruses and retroviruses, by the appearance and host range of the CPE, and also by using selective immunological and molecular probe based assays, including Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing methods.

Cytopathic effects
According to Martin's theory, common features of the cytopathic effects induced by stealth-adapted viruses are: marked metabolic disruption, lipid accumulation, cytoplasmic vacuolization, formation of aberrant protein and lipoprotein inclusions, and abnormally shaped nuclei. Comparable foamy vacuolating cellular changes with atypical inclusion-like structures can be seen in detailed examination of brain and other tissues, obtained from infected patients and animals inoculated with these viruses. Infected cells seem to be metabolically impaired, as various energy and other resources are diverted towards an inefficient and unbalanced synthesis of various virus coded components, at the expense of normal cellular functions. Severe defects in energy-generating metabolic pathways are also apparent from the marked mitochondrial changes that are prominent in electron micrographs of virus-infected cells.

Proposed autism link
Much of the debate over a potential infectious cause for increases in many illnesses, in particular the question whether autism's incidence rate is growing, has centered on the interplay between genetic predisposition and conventional microorganisms. Martin hypothesizes autistic spectrum disorders result primarily from prenatal viral infections affecting the brain, occurring in genetically predisposed infants. Such infections may be the cause of increased susceptibility to further brain damage from vaccines and other environmentally triggered auto-immune vectors. (''see Controversies in autism)

Clinical conditions associated with stealth virus infections
Martin claims that stealth-adapted viruses have been recovered from the blood, cerebrospinal fluid, urine, throat swabs, breast milk, brain biopsies and tumor samples of patients with various neurological, psychiatric, auto-immune, allergic and other diseases. Examples include autism, attention deficit and behavioral disorders in children; clinical depression, schizophrenia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia in adults; and neurodegenerative illnesses in the elderly. Stealth viruses can infect many organs, but the brain is especially susceptible to the effects of even limited localized cellular damage. Stealth virus induced encephalopathies are probably heavily influenced by the timing of infection. Cancer has been added to the list of potential stealth virus-associated diseases.

Prevalence
Indications of the likely prevalence of stealth virus infection, among apparently healthy individuals, has come from studies Martin conducted on student blood donors attending a college campus. Just under 10% of the units tested gave a positive result.

Diagnosis
A major challenge in providing medical care for afflicted patients is the diverse clinical manifestations of the patients' illnesses, which do not easily fit into a single medical discipline. Imprecise diagnostic labels tend to obscure the complex multi-system nature of the patients' illnesses. Another difficulty is quantitating the severity of disease processes that can vary widely over time, and can be influenced by such non-specific factors as stress, environmental exposures to chemicals, placebo effects, etc.