A few days after Science fully retracted the controversial article in 09 suggesting that a virus called XMRV plays a role in chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), the only other supporting document a link between a mouse-related virus and the mysterious condition was officially removed from the scientific record. Yesterday, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( PNAS ) issued a redemption notice, signed by the seven authors of the 2010 study, which, as Science paper, had come under fire virologists.
"In my mind, they would have done this months ago," says Jonathan Stoye of the National Institute of Medical Research Council for Medical Research in London, who co-authored a study in PLoS ONE in May questioned the results of PNAS paper [
the study PNAS , the principal researcher was Shyh-Ching Lo of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has played a special role in the 2-year-old saga that erupted on link XMRV supposed to CFS. News about the first study appeared on the Web after one of the authors, Harvey Alter of the clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), reviewed the work at a meeting in Croatia in May 2010. at the time, the science document on XMRV written by Judy Mikovits of the Whittemore Peterson Institute in Reno, Nevada, and colleagues, was under siege, as a number of other studies have failed to replicate data. Alter, a highly respected virologist and winner of an Albert Lasker Award, said Mikovits was right after all, creating excitement among patients eager to find the cause of their elusive disease.
But when PNAS finally published the paper in August 2010, some retrovirologists disputed the authors' claim that their study supported the work of Mikovits. The viral sequences detected in CFS patients by Lo, Alter, and their colleagues were not part of XMRV, but another large group of virus, murine leukemia virus (MLV) -related virus.
However, the work seems to allude to a viral link to this debilitating condition. Using PCR, the team found MLV-related DNA sequences in 32 of 37 CFS patients, and only three of 44 healthy controls. Blood samples from CFS patients back to the 190s, but the team was able to take the eight fresh blood of patients and found DNA evidence of MLV in seven of them. In the 15 years the virus seems to have evolved, the researchers wrote, which is what would be expected for a long term retroviral infection but not if the findings were the cause of the contamination.
But this latter finding actually turned out to be its Achilles heel. In PloS ONE paper Stoye and others argued that the viral DNA sequences identified in fresh samples were very unlikely to have evolved from viruses found 15 years ago. Phylogenetic analysis more sophisticated from a team led by Greg Towers of University College London, published in the Journal of Virology last October, argued the same. "The only realistic explanation," the paper concluded, was that the patient samples or PCR reagents "were contaminated with DNA from the mouse."
Towers said Lo, Alter, and their co-authors has never publicly responded to the article by his team. But they seem to have accepted its conclusions, citing the phylogeny of Towers as one of the reasons for the withdrawal.
The redemption notice cites other reasons. There was not enough left of the original patient samples to be tested by independent researchers, writing team, and additional work to find antiviral antibodies in patients and to isolate the actual virus failed. In addition, the researchers themselves are not able to find MLV in blind MultiLab study group called Blood XMRV Scientific Research Working in which they participated, and which included five samples of their patients original SFC. The group published its findings in Science in September.
Lo and Alter did not respond to interview requests. Press officers at NIH says Alter was on vacation and sent Science initiated a statement "instead of interviews," which resembled closely the text of the retraction and contained no further details.
the retraction removes the only newspaper still left suggesting a role for murine virus in CFS. support for the study of Lo and Alter also come from Maureen Hanson of Cornell University, who has meetings also reported the discovery of MLV sequences as in CFS patients. in an e-mail to Science Insider, Hanson wrote that she did not present these results for publication, "because we can not determine whether these results were due to contamination. "Hanson believes MultiLab a second large study, led by Ian Lipkin of Columbia University, will provide the final answer." I reserve judgment until he is over, "she said.
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