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A multi-center research team is now searching for evidence of murine gamma retroviruses or other viral involvement in 150 well-defined, geographically diverse chronic fatigue syndrome patient samples. The study, led by Columbia University’s “virus hunter,” Ian Lipkin, and sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) expects to have results some time in 2012. As Dr. Lipkin has suggested, CFS “smells like a viral disease,” and his lab will be using “next generation” genetic sequencing in the CFS study. (According to him, this technology has allowed identification of 500 new viruses so far.) Meanwhile, Both the Lo-Alter...

Judy Mikovits, who has been in the spotlight for the past 2 years after Science published a controversial report by her group that tied a novel mouse retrovirus to chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), is now behind bars. Sheriffs in Ventura County, California, arrested Mikovits yesterday on felony charges that she is a fugitive from justice. She is being held at the Todd Road Jail in Santa Paula without bail. But ScienceInsider could obtain only sketchy details about the specific charges against her. The Ventura County sheriff's office told ScienceInsider that it had no available details about the charges and was...

Dashing the hopes of many people with chronic fatigue syndrome, an eagerly awaited study coordinated by government health agencies has not confirmed a link between the illness and a virus called XMRV or others from the same class of mouse leukemia viruses. Two research groups had earlier reported an association between chronic fatigue syndrome and the group of viruses, known as murine leukemia viruses, or M.L.V.’s, raising hopes that a treatment or cure could be found. But later studies did not substantiate the link, and many researchers suggested that that the initial findings were the result of contamination of laboratory...

Enlarge Image Buggy research? Increasing evidence suggests that contamination explains ties between CFS and XMRV, pictured here in a cross-sectional illustration and an electron micrograph. Credit: Bob Silverman/Cleveland Clinic/Illustration by David Schumick; (inset, right) Lombardi et al., Science You cannot un-ring a bell, but you can retract a scientific study. Then again, as a raging debate over a Science paper that linked a mouse retrovirus to chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) makes clear, retractions can be a tall order, too. In conjunction with their decision to publish two additional papers that strongly question the link between the virus, known as...

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. Dr. Vincent Racaniello, a...

The debate over what XMRV may do to humans continues. But at least in a small group of monkeys, one thing is clear, according to a new study. “The virus causes chronic, persistent infection,” says Robert Silverman of the Cleveland Clinic, a co-author of the paper, which was published online yesterday in the Journal of Virology. Moreover, the new research suggests that in these monkeys, at least, the virus can be difficult to detect in blood, even though it’s taken root in the body. This is a tantalizing finding because it raises the prospect that someone could be infected with...

Yesterday the Chicago Tribune published my reaction to the four papers on the retrovirus XMRV published this week in the journal Retrovirology. I was quoted as saying ”These four papers are probably the beginning of the end of XMRV and CFS”. I wish to retract this statement and explain my reasons for doing so. Upon re-reading three of the four Retrovirology papers it became clear to me that they show that identification of XMRV can be fraught with contamination problems, but they do not imply that previously published studies are compromised by these findings. Clearly any new studies done on...

U.K. Study Overturns Previous Research Citing Virus as Cause of CFS Reviewed by Rob Hicks, MD Chronic fatigue syndrome is not caused by the virus XMRV, according to new research. A team from University College London, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, and University of Oxford, all in England, says previous research linking the virus to chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) was flawed because of contamination of mouse cell DNA samples in the laboratory. CFS is a disorder characterized by chronic fatigue lasting six months or longer, with several additional symptoms that may include impaired memory, unrefreshing sleep, muscle pain, sore throat,...

Four papers published today in the journal Retrovirology—and a fifth one commenting on the papers—demonstrated how easy it is for mouse contamination to skew lab experiments involving the virus XMRV. But they are unlikely to resolve the debate over whether XMRV is linked to diseases like chronic fatigue syndrome or prostate cancer, especially since the authors of the papers disagree on the interpretation of their data. Greg J. Towers from University College London, a senior author of one of the papers, told the Health Blog that his group’s findings indicate that ”XMRV is not a human pathogen.” But John M....

An advisory committee to the federal Food and Drug Administration is recommending that people with chronic fatigue syndrome be barred from donating blood, amid concerns a retrovirus may be linked to the disease. The recommendation by the panel must now be reviewed by the FDA, which typically follows the advice of such panels but is not required to do so. An FDA spokeswoman said there was no timetable yet on a final decision. Judy Mikovits, who led the team of researchers that published the study in Science linking XMRV to chronic fatigue syndrome, said Tuesday's decision is a victory for...

[0003] The present inventors discovered that Xenotropic murine leukemia-related retrovirus (XMRV) has a strong link with human cancer, including prostate cancer and breast cancer. XMRV may also be associated with cervical cancer, hematologic malignancies, including lymphomas and leukemias, and non-cancerous conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome and other neuroimmune diseases. This disclosure describes a series of methods to detect XMRV infection, and for use of that information in the diagnosis [0109] Additionally, 178 cases of breast cancer were examined for the presence of XMRV using the described methods. Approximately 25% of breast cancers contained either XMRV proviral DNA sequences or...

Since a group of researchers published a paper in Science last year suggesting the retrovirus XMRV is linked to chronic fatigue syndrome, scientists have been debating the accuracy of that finding. Now a study designed to address that issue once and for all is moving forward. Clinicians who treat CFS patients, scientists and others convened recently in New York, where virus hunter Ian Lipkin is based. Lipkin was asked by NIH and NIAID to head up the study. At least three labs have agreed to test fresh blood samples for XMRV. Two labs, at FDA/NIH and the Whittemore-Peterson Institute, have...

Two groups of researchers studying a potential link between chronic-fatigue syndrome and a virus called XMRV have reached contradictory conclusions, according to people familiar with the findings. One group found a link, and the other didn't. Their reports were held from publication after being accepted by two science journals—a rare move that has caused a stir among scientists in the field. ------ Scientists at the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, including NIH infectious-disease specialist Harvey Alter, recently finished research that came to a conclusion similar to that of the Science paper—that XMRV, or xenotropic murine...

A report that a respected NIH expert supported an association between the XMRV virus and chronic fatigue syndrome is causing a buzz among CFS patient activists, researchers and clinicians. According to a press release issued by a Dutch magazine, one of the slides presented at a recent workshop in Zagreb by Harvey Alter, chief of the infectious disease section at the NIH’s clinical center, supports the link between XMRV and CFS reported last year in Science. This is significant because studies published later by other groups have produced conflicting results. Alter is a well-known figure in the infectious-disease world; his...

Enlarge ImageControversial link. A previous study of chronic fatigue syndrome pointed to a retrovirus found in cancerous prostate cells (magnified in inset).Credit: ROBERT SCHLABERG AND HARSH THAKER Here we go again. Late last year, scientists seemed to be homing in on the cause of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS)—excessive tiredness and other symptoms that have no known biological cause--by finding a supposed viral link. But a new paper challenges that link, a development that may plunge the field back into the same confusion and acrimony that has characterized it for years. Many CFS patients report that their symptoms began after...

EARLIER this month, a study published in the journal Science answered a question that medical scientists had been asking since 2006, when they learned of a novel virus found in prostate tumors called xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus, or XMRV: Was it a human infection? XMRV is a gammaretrovirus, one of a family of viruses long-studied in animals but not known to infect people. In animals, these retroviruses can cause horrendous neurological problems, immune deficiency, lymphoma and leukemia. The new study provided overwhelming evidence that XMRV is a human gammaretrovirus — the third human retrovirus (after H.I.V. and human lymphotropic...

Could a virus be the cause of chronic fatigue syndrome? A study published last week in the journal Science... --snip-- Further testing after the paper was written found the virus in nearly 98 percent of about 300 patients with the syndrome, Dr. Mikovits said. --snip-- The study received a mixed review from Dr. William C. Reeves, who directs public health research on the syndrome at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He called the research exciting but preliminary, and said he was surprised that a prestigious journal like Science had published it, because the researchers did not state the...

Prostate cancer pathogen may be behind the disease once dubbed 'yuppie flu'. A study on chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) has linked the mysterious and controversial disease to a recently discovered retrovirus. Just last month researchers found the same virus to be associated with aggressive prostate tumours.Chronic fatigue syndrome is seen as a serious but poorly defined disease.PUNCHSTOCK CFS is marked by debilitating exhaustion and often an array of other symptoms, including memory and concentration problems and painful muscles and joints. The underlying cause of the disease is unknown; it is diagnosed only when other physical and psychiatric diseases have been...