Study Reignites Debate About Viral Agent in Patients With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Study Reignites Debate About Viral Agent in Patients With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/extract/304/15/1653

Bridget M. Kuehn

JAMA. 2010;304(15):1653-1656. doi:10.1001/jama.2010.1421

"A study linking chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) in humans to a family of retroviruses that cause leukemia in mice appears to validate a controversial study published last fall. But far from settling the debate about the role of viruses in the disease, the new findings raise a host of questions about why other scientists, including a team from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), have failed to find such a link, and about the potential clinical and public health implications. The study was published in August in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Lo S-C et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. doi:10.1073/pnas.1006901107 [published ahead of print August 23, 2010]).

"These results raise as many questions as they answer," said Steve Monroe, PhD, director of the Division of High-Consequence Pathogens and Pathology at the CDC."