green Posted June 1, 2011 Report Share Posted June 1, 2011 The journal Science has published two papers that cast doubt on the hypothesis that the XMRV retro-virus plays a role in CFS. One of those papers was published by Judy Mikovits of the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease, who has been mentioned on this forum before. "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other groups, published studies reporting they didn't find XMRV in chronic fatigue syndrome patients. Other papers found that substances used as part of the process to detect XMRV might be contaminated, raising the possibility that this may explain the positive findings in the 2009 Science paper." WSJ 6-1-2011 However, a similar study published in the PNAS linking CFS to a whole family of polyropic murine leukemia viruses (PMLV) has not been challenged. XMRV is one species found in the PMLV family. Harvey Altar published the study linking PMLV to CFS. WSJ - Given Doubt Cast on CFS-XMRV Link, What about Related Studies? It sounds like the XMRV hypothesis may have been overly specific. To make an analogy, if I were to say "smoking is the sole environmental cause of cancer" this would be wrong because many other toxins besides tobacco-smoke cause cancer. So, XMRV may cause CFS, but if it does, then only because all members of the PMLV family cause CFS, and XMRV is a member of the PMLV family. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HopeSprings Posted June 1, 2011 Report Share Posted June 1, 2011 Well that's good news. Sounds like there is still hope. All that XMRV stuff was so disappointing. Keeping my fingers crossed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ramakentesh Posted June 3, 2011 Report Share Posted June 3, 2011 XMRV was always never going to pan out. The story behind it itself is totally inprobable:An medical researcher was working in a diner and saw a tv show on CFS and decided on the spot that it was caused by a retrovirus, then applied for a job at an institute and lo and behold - the very first retrovirus she looked for happened to be in a highly inprobably number of CFS patients. its like winning the lotto. The research on the brain stem, autonomic regulation and cerebral vascular autoregulation is far more interesting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HopeSprings Posted June 3, 2011 Report Share Posted June 3, 2011 I think the government banning blood donations from CFS patients provided even more fuel to this fire. I don't understand why the rush to judgement if XMRV was not definitively proven. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toddm1960 Posted June 3, 2011 Report Share Posted June 3, 2011 Until the BWG study is done it's way too soon to tell. No one has repeated the original Science papers process exactly yet, and the negitive studies have not been able to find it with their methods. If WPI can find the blinded samples alot of people will be eating crow.Rama where did you get that bio of Judy? That's the second time you've thrown it out there and it seems to be mostly urban legend. She worked 20 years at NCI, heavly into HIV she's been working on retroviruses since the mid 90's. Guess I'd just like to know where you got the information. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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