Detecting retroviral sequences in chronic fatigue syndrome
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Amplifying and Quantifying HIV-1 RNA in HIV Infected Individuals with Viral Loads Below the Limit of Detection by Standard Clinical Assays
Published on: September 26, 2011
1Department of Pathology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA.
Abstract:
XMRV or xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related retrovirus, a recently discovered retrovirus, has been linked to both prostate cancer and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Recently, the teams of Drs. Shyh-Ching Lo and Harvey Alter discovered the presence of sequences closely related to XMRV in the blood of 86.5% of patients with CFS [1]. These findings are important because since the initial discovery of XMRV in CFS, several studies have failed to find XMRV in specimens collected from CFS patients. While the current study also did not find XMRV in CFS, Lo et al. did detect sequences that belong to polytropic mouse endogenous retroviruses (PMV), which share considerable similarity with XMRV. Criteria for future studies that will help bring greater clarity to the issue of retroviral sequences in CFS are proposed below.
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