Virus Fatica Cronica

Esiste un virus molto simile all' Hiv che causa la malattia detta Sindrome della Fatica cronica.
In pratica il paziente si sente sempre stanco senza nessuna causa apparente.
Oggi si pensa di curare con antiretrovirali questa malattia.

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New research rattles hopes for many patients with chronic fatigue syndrome
Retroviral link to debilitating illness looking shaky, but critics still bank on anti-HIV drugs

"Very clearly something is going on in the majority of people being treated," she said. "Most don't notice they are taking them."

Physicians who work with HIV patients say antiretroviral drugs can cause significant side effects and that efficacy cannot be determined through anecdotes.

The chasm between the WPI and its supporters and many in the scientific community is emblematic of a new, modern-day dynamic in which patients keep close tabs on the work of researchers and feel empowered to challenge that work and form strong opinions about the quality of it.

Early on, many in the online chronic fatigue community threw their support behind WPI, believing strongly that XMRV was the cause of their illness. More than 1,000 people have paid for non-FDA-approved XMRV blood tests from a commercial lab associated with WPI and headed by Whittemore's husband, Harvey, according to state records. The tests range from $249 to $450, according to the lab website.

Patients' ardent support for XMRV as a cause has continued as other research teams have failed to find any evidence that it was true.

On one patient message board, a commenter wrote in February about not only having contributed multiple times to WPI but also having "sent letters, e-mails, tried to contribute ideas, talked with both Judy M. and Annette, considered whether there's an opportunity for venture capital funding, am willing to protest, knit a pair of socks, etc."

This month, 4,000 scientists and clinicians gathered in Boston for a retroviral conference that included 10 presentations offering evidence that XMRV is a lab contaminant. Mikovits did not attend.

Retrovirologist Jonathan Stoye, who co-wrote a supportive commentary that accompanied Mikovits' original study linking chronic fatigue syndrome and XMRV, said he has since changed his mind.

"I think there are serious problems," said Stoye, who works at MRC National Institute for Medical Research in London.

His co-author, John Coffin, a retrovirologist at Tufts University, agreed the evidence for a link between XMRV and human disease had been seriously weakened.

"I think most people are reasonably convinced that there is not much left anymore," Coffin said. But, he said, "I don't think everything has been nailed down."

Coffin began harboring doubts about Mikovits' study as negative evidence piled up and after he, researcher Vinay Pathak at the National Cancer Institute and their colleagues found what they believe to be the parent viruses of XMRV.

The viruses, according to research Pathak presented at the Boston conference, recombined in a cell line called 22RV1 to create a new retrovirus — XMRV — sometime in the 1990s. The work is in the publication process.

That widely used cell line had been stored in Silverman's lab before he found evidence of the retrovirus in the prostate tissue of patients with a form of prostate cancer.

"22RV1 cells were once previously (more than a year earlier) grown in my lab but were being stored in a liquid nitrogen freezer at the time, and not the same freezer used to store prostate tissues," Silverman wrote in an e-mail. "At the time it was unknown that 22RV1 cells were infected with XMRV."

In the field of virology, contamination has sometimes been mistaken for real results. Greg Towers, a virologist from University College London, notes that the technology used is so sensitive that it takes only one molecule of genetic material to contaminate a sample.

Scientists have been reluctant to shut the door completely on the possibility that XMRV really is tied to human disease. Some questions remain unanswered, said Racaniello, of Columbia University. "I don't think it is time to put a lid on it," he said. "You have to carry the whole thing to its conclusion."

The XMRV story is, to Racaniello, an amazing opportunity for people to watch how science works in real time.

"It is like Watergate," he said. "You saw the Constitution work. You think, oh my gosh, it works! And this is science working. Science determines the truth. … It always sorts it out in the end."

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