Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and XMRV

Photo by Phil Myers

A report out this week has concluded that there is no link between the mouse retrovirus, XMRV, and chronic fatigue syndrome or CFS.  This is an interesting story for a couple of reasons.  First of all, viruses are incredibly interesting!! Second, if XMRV were linked to CFS, it would be the only retrovirus other than HIV and HTLV known to be associated with significant human disease.

The history of this research is also pretty interesting and has some good ol' human drama in it.  Originally, there were two studies that found evidence of XMRV (Lombardi et al 2009) or another mouse virus, pMLV (Lo et al. 2010)  in samples from patients with CFS.  After these were published, other researchers were not able to replicate the results and eventually the link was dismissed by many scientists.  One of the lead scientists in the 2009 study that reported a link would not share her data with other scientists (red flag!) and was eventually fired and briefly arrested for stealing the lab notebooks with the data.  She returned the notebooks, though I'm not sure what was found within the data.  At any rate, she and the other scientist who found a link between a virus and CFS were both involved in this new study that found no link in a large cohort, which is probably the best possible end to the dispute.  It's great that they were able to put their attachment to their original findings aside and work together to figure out what's really going on.  I find the human drama part of the story interesting because, as a young scientist, I'm sometimes surprised by how often egos and politics get in the way of scientific progress. Though I'm not as naive about it as I was just a few years ago. At least it makes things more interesting.