New York Times (June 1, 2011)- In a blow to patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, two new studies published on Tuesday raised serious doubts about earlier reports that the disabling disease is linked to infection with XMRV, a poorly understood retrovirus. The new papers were posted online in the journal Science, which in October 2009 published the initial research linking XMRV to chronic fatigue syndrome. In an “editorial expression of concern” accompanying the two new studies, Bruce Alberts, editor in chief of the journal, declared that the earlier finding “is now seriously in question” and was most likely due to laboratory contamination.
Based on those earlier findings, some people with chronic fatigue syndrome tried to obtain access to antiretroviral drugs used to treat H.I.V., which had been shown in laboratory studies to inhibit the replication of XMRV.
But in one of the two new studies, researchers found no trace of XMRV or related viruses in the blood of 43 patients who had previously tested positive for XMRV. In the second study, scientists reported evidence that XMRV was likely a recombination of two mouse leukemia viruses created accidentally in laboratory experiments.
The new studies are the latest in a series of disappointments for people struggling with chronic fatigue syndrome. Other researchers have been unable to duplicate the original findings implicating XMRV, although none of their studies fully replicated the methods of the original research from the Cleveland Clinic, the National Cancer Institute and the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease in Reno, Nev.
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