Friday, June 3, 2011

Retroviral sequences related to human T-lymphotropic virus type II in patients with ME/CFS support an association

E DeFreitas, B Hilliard, P R Cheney, D S Bell, E Kiggundu, D Sankey, Z Wroblewska, M Palladino, J P Woodward, and H Koprowski, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 88, pp. 2922-2926, April 1991, Medical Sciences:

Abstract

Chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome (CFIDS) is a recently recognized illness characterized by debilitating fatigue as well as immunological and neurological abnormalities [Straus, S.E. (1988) J. Inf. Dis. 157, 405-412]. Once thought to be caused by Epstein-Barr virus, it is now thought to have a different but unknown etiology. We evaluated 30 adult and pediatric CFIDS patients from six eastern states for the presence of human T-lymphotropic virus (HTLV) types I and II by Western immunoblotting, polymearse chain reaction, and in situ hybridization of blood samples. The majority of patients were positive for HTLV antibodies by Western blotting and for HTLV-II gag sequences by polymerase chain reaction and in situ hybridization. Twenty nonexposure healthy controls were negative in all assays. These data support an association between an HTLV-II-like virus and CFIDS.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

wasn't this debunked as contamination years ago? what is the relevence?

More Anonymous Than You said...

It was never "debunked as contamination", but the CDC and another group published negative studies that did not replicate DeFreitas's methods. Has a familiar ring, eh...

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