XMRV & CFS -Does the Story Continue

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CORANTE

In the Pipeline

June 7, 2011

Murine Viruses and Chronic

Fatigue: Does the Story

Continue

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Well, one day after writing an obit for the XMRV

story comes this abstract (http://bit.ly/lFNUiC)

from Retrovirology.

The authors, from Cornell and SUNY-Buffalo, say

that they've detected other murine retrovirus

transcripts from CFS patients (but not in most

controls), and that these are more similar to

those reported in last year's Lo and Alter paper in

PNAS (http://bit.ly/j8LDj9) than they are to XMRV

itself.

So perhaps the story continues, and what a mess

it is at this point. I continue to think that the

XMRV hypothesis itself is in serious trouble, but

murine retroviruses as a class are still worth

following up on.

This is tough work, though, because of the twin

problems of detection and contamination, and it's

going to be easy for people to fool themselves.

Meanwhile, Retraction Watch has more

(http://bit.ly/lzSWuo) on Science's *Expression of

Concern* that I wrote about yesterday.

It appears that the journal asked the authors to

retract the paper (so says the Wall Street Journal,

anyway) but that co-author Judy Mikovits turned

them down (as might have been expected from

her previous stands (http://bit.ly/mfzl46) in this

area).

Science released their editorial note early because

of the WSJ piece.