Failure to Detect XMRV-Specific Antibodies in the Plasma of CFS Patients Using Highly Sensitive Chemiluminescence Immunoassays

Abstract EN

In 2009, Lombardi et al.

reported their startling finding that the gammaretrovirus xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related retrovirus (XMRV) is present in 67% of blood samples of patients suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), as opposed to only 3.7% of samples from healthy individuals.

However, we and others could not confirm these results, using a nested PCR assay.

An alternative to this highly sensitive, but contamination-prone, technique is to measure the serological response to XMRV.

Thus, we tested the plasma samples from our cohorts of CFS patients and healthy controls for the presence of XMRV-specific antibodies.

Using two novel chemiluminescence immunoassays (CMIAs), we show that none of our samples have any XMRV-reactive antibodies.

Taken together with our previous findings, we conclude that XMRV is not present in any human individual tested by us, regardless of CFS or healthy control.