Wednesday

Chronic fatigue syndrome virus

 Scientists have announced that a 2009 study which concluded that chronic fatigue syndrome is caused by virus has been found to be flawed. The new findings throw scientists back to the wilderness in their quest to understand how one gets the disease.
Two separate studies which were published this week in the journal Science have concluded that the 2009 study was inaccurate to point accusing fingers at the xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus. The virus which is also called XMRV was said to be the cause of the syndrome which affects about one million of the United States population.
The report that the condition was caused by XMRV got some doctors and patients contemplating using the anti-retroviral drugs to treat the condition. Several viruses and even bacteria have been linked to the condition in previous studies.
A medical researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, Jay Levy, led one of the studies which found no connection between the condition and a virus. During the research, a group of chronic fatigue syndrome patients were tested but none of them had the virus.
The other study was carried out by researchers from Tufts University, the National Cancer Institute and the University of California, Davis. They concluded that the virus at the center of the controversy might have in fact been manufactured in the lab.