the National Institute of Health along with representatives from the FDA and CDC held a telebriefing for the press regarding the possible link between XMRV and ME/CFS. The findings of the FDA and NIH showed that 86.5% of blood samples taken from ME/CFS patients (32 out of 37 samples) were found to be positive for variants of the XMRV virus, a retrovirus that is related to HIV This is in comparison with only 6% of a healthy control group (3 out of44 samples).
This not only confirms the original findings tying the retrovirus to a large number of cases, it identified a host of infectious agents in the same family, called MLV-related viruses..MLV means "murine-leukemia virus," which is one of the 3 identified human retroviruses. The M in XMRV stands for the same thing, and the R stands for "related." MLV-related viruses all belong to the same family of retroviruses.
This new finding of a diverse virus population is more consistent with what we know of retroviruses -- that they tend to mutate frequently, which makes them harder to eradicate.
This is very big news for the ME/CFS community. It doesn't necessarily prove that the XMRV retrovirus causes ME/CFS, but the strength of this link is now beyond any doubt, and will mean that further studies will be undertaken to see if it is indeed causative. .
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/08/16/1006901107.abstract
