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XMRV virus found in Dutch patients
This press release was issued today 2010/16/04 in The Netherlands Dutch journalist Toine de Graaf.
Gendringen, 2010/04/16 - Researchers at UMC St. Radboud announced in
February no XMRV virus has been found in the blood of Dutch chronic fatigue
syndrome (ME/CFS) patients.
They concealed, however, that U.S. researchers
did found traces of this retrovirus in blood samples of the same patient.
This is shown in a web publication of Ortho magazine, which is put online
today.
For years medical researchers have been searching for the biological cause
of CFS, but always without success. Last October Americans announced a
breakthrough: researchers from the Whittemore Peterson Institute (WPI) in
Reno found the retrovirus XMRV in many patients with ME/CFS.
The study was
published in the leading scientific journal Science, after a Research period
of 2.5 years.
Researchers at UMC St. Radboud had doubts and decided to repeat the Science
research, with frozen blood samples from Dutch patients from 1991-1992. The
study took place very rapidly under the leadership of Nijmegen experimental
virologist Dr. Frank Kuppeveld and internist Professor Dr. Jos van der Meer.
But they found nothing.
"Neither in the blood of 32 patients, nor in that of
the 43 controls, the retrovirus was found ", the UMC St. Radboud was quoted
in a press release issued at the end of last February.
Now it is obvious certain things are concealed.
This week a letter has been
made public by Annette Whittemore, who directs the WPI.
In this letter she
describes that the WPI, at the request of Frank Van Kuppeveld, has tested
some blood samples from the Dutch cohort study prior to the completion of
the Nijmegen study.
The WPI found traces of XMRV in these samples.
Whittemore says she possesses email correspondence that shows Van Kuppeveld
was aware of the WPI research results before the Dutch study was published
in the British Medical Journal.
The web publication of Ortho provides a reconstruction of events based on an
interview with Dr. Judy Mikovits, Research Director of the WPI. The web
publication coincides with the appearance of the April issue of Ortho, were
further attention is spent on XMRV.
The Dutch Ortho article
is here.
Further Links:
Detection of an Infectious Retrovirus, XMRV, in Blood Cells of Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
- click here
More details on the original research
published in Science magazine -
click here. Annette Whittemore of the Whittemore-Peterson Institute has issued the following letter to Dr McClure who was involved in the research by ICL - click here. Documented involvement of Viruses in ME/CFS -
click here
Return to
Q2 2010 News
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Last Update:
26 April 2010 | | 
