Investigators at the 36th annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America reported last week that, like chlamydia, cytomegalovirus infection may be a risk factor for coronary atherosclerosis. Dr. Archana Chatterjee and colleagues at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, infected guinea pigs with CMV and fed a low vitamin C diets. Infected animals on the low vitamin C diet developed myocarditis and inflammatory and viral lesions in the aorta within 4 to 6 weeks. Immunosuppressive therapy with steroids further increased the inflammatory process and increased the number of viral infections. Uninfected animals fed low vitamin C diets did not develop signs of atherosclerosis for about 6 months. CMV-negative animals on a normal diet developed no signs of heart disease during the study period. Dr. Chatterjee noted that the lesions that she saw were similar to those seen in heart transplant patients who are on Immunosuppressive therapy. Infection with CMV would increase their risk of atherosclerosis, she noted. She added that about 50% of adults have latent CMV infection.

COMMENT: Yet another confirmation that infections are a HUGE part of chronic disease. Again, we acquire these infections from poor diets and non optimized strategies on handling stress. Hopefully, these two items have encouraged you to follow the diet again. I have posted my most recent diet recommendations as of Thanksgiving at the end of this newsletter. I request ALL of my new patients to read this WORD for WORD every day for two weeks. This report took me over six years to compile and to modify. I attempt to update the diet every month or so on my web site. So you might want to review it there periodically.