Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Big controversy regarding the conflicting studies of the role of XMRV (xenotropic mouse leukemia virus-related virus) in chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). 2 papers coming out almost simultaneously from FDA (Shy-Ching Lo)/NIH (Harvey Alter) in PNAS and the CDC in Retrovirology. FDA/NIH finds correlation (86% vs 8.% in normals), while CDC finds no correlation. I have been involved in trying to get to the bottom of this prior to publication of the discordant results since we knew of the data before the papers were published. I believe that the FDA/NIH study is contaminated and I do not believe Shy Lo since in the late 1980s he had claimed with what appeared to be fool-proof data that AIDS was associated with a new species of mycoplasma (M. fermentans) as a co-factor. The data proved to be spurious,, but people seem to have forgotten about this. I have convinced Ian Lipkin from Columbia (Mailman School of Public Health) to referee coded sample examination of FDA looking at negative samples from CDC study. The exercise was somewhat inconclusive. Lo does not want to do another study starting with identical CFS samples that are coded together with known normals and known spiked samples to really settle this. The issue is that highly emotional CFS crowd now wants to treat CFS people with anti-retroviral drugs, despite no evidence of causality and several negative studies besides the CDC study.