Slanted Science

Work just published in the journal Science – a member of the world’s top tier of scientific publications – suggests that a virus associated with aggressive prostate cancer may also be involved in the disease known as ME.

The virus is called XMRV, and researchers have found that it is present in the blood 67% of ME patients (as opposed to just 4% of the general population). On behalf of the authors, Judy Mikovits says:

“[XMRV is] a bloodborne pathogen that we contract through body fluids and blood transmission. The symptoms of ME – chronic fatigue, immune deficiencies, chronic infections – are what we see with retroviruses.”

And it’s also what we see with ME, which has the alternative name of chronic fatigue syndrome. However, the mere presence of the retrovirus along with some symptoms which resemble other retroviral infections are not conclusive evidence that we have found the cause. The BBC reports the comments of Richard Grunewald, a consultant neurologist in Sheffield, UK:

“The idea that all [cases of] chronic fatigue syndrome can be caused by caused by a single virus doesn’t sound plausible to most people who work in the field. A lot of the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome are not like those of a viral infection.”

In a welcome example of restraint by scientists writing these kinds of “new cause found for disease X” reports (I’m looking at you, Andrew Wakefield), the authors accept that this is still circumstantial evidence. The paper admits that XMRV may be involved with the disease development, or it may be that the disease simply makes people more susceptible to infection with the XMRV retrovirus.

Best of luck with future research to the scientists. To ME patients: please don’t get excited just yet, despite any sensationalist reports you may read. This is a theory about the cause of the disease, and is not waterproof.

Don’t Hold Your Breath, But This May Lead To: a simple treatment for ME, or chronic fatigue syndrome. Retroviral drugs, such as are currently in use treating HIV patients.