XMRV: Red Cross Barring ME/CFS Blood Donors

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

December 3, 2010, 9:28 PM ET

XMRV: Red Cross Now

Barring Blood Donors

Who Have CFS

By Amy Dockser Marcus

The controversy over whether the retrovirus XMRV is

linked to chronic fatigue syndrome has still not been

resolved, but the American Red Cross has just

weighed in.

The organization said today that as a result of

concerns over XMRV, it is barring people with a

diagnosis of CFS from donating blood.

In a press release here [http://bit.ly/fdIBPi], the Red

Cross said that there isn't enough data yet to

determine for sure that XMRV is transmitted through

blood transfusions or that it causes diseases.

But " in the interest of patient and donor safety, " the

organization said it was indefinitely barring blood

donations from people with CFS.

HealthBlog wasn't able to reach the Red Cross for

comment, but it's likely that a number of recent

events prompted today's announcement.

In June, a task force set up by the AABB, an

organization whose members collect most of the

blood in the U.S. and to which the Red Cross

belongs, urged members to discourage people with

CFS from donating blood.

More recently, a group of researchers at the FDA,

NIH, and Harvard Medical School published a paper

that linked a family of viruses, to which XMRV

belongs, to CFS.

A federally funded task force has been studying

whether XMRV poses a threat to the nation's blood

supply since last year, when a paper in Science first

raised the possibility that XMRV was not only linked

to CFS but was also found in the blood of healthy

people.

Later this month, the task force is expected to

present a report on its work to an FDA committee

that looks at blood safety issues.

The FDA is in charge of regulating the blood supply

but yet hasn't changed its recommendations on

donations from people with CFS.