XMRV and Public Health: The Retroviral Genome Is Not a Suitable Template for Diagnostic PCR, ... ME/CFS, 2017, Panelli et al

XMRV and Public Health: The Retroviral Genome Is Not a Suitable Template for Diagnostic PCR, and Its Association with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Appears Unreliable
Panelli et al

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2017.00108/full

 

i thought that was put to rest by the explanation of corrupted samples . just seen the publication date and cannot remember the date the contaminated samples were found .

 

Based on the above excerpt it doesn't look, to me, like that's what is being said.

It looks as if they are saying that the primers, not the samples, are not providing enough accuracy and so are/have been producing inconsistent results.

In short that we/they don't have the tools needed to test the hypothesis.

Which is 'odd' in that my understanding was that labs all over the place could reliably detect XMRV if XMRV itself was tested, it was only when they looked for it in ME/CFS samples that 'inconsistencies' and lack of replicatably results occurred.

Which doesn't sound like a primer problem to me - either the primer can bind to it or not - but I'm not a person who knows anything about things that exist, or might exist, and I know even less about things that don't, exist.

 

No, that was not what happened. The labs were able to find XMRV in their control samples when they used a relatively large sample and one where they knew the exact genome. This is not relevant to real life as retroviruses are rarely an exact genetic match. HIV for instance comes in many different forms which keep changing so lab kits need to be continually kept up to date.

It also does not spend much time in the blood stream so an infection cannot always be detected. Again HIV can only be detected and treated when it is in a free form in the blood. They infected gibbons with XMRV and their blood was clear after a few weeks but their lymph nodes were full of virus.

They never found the source of contamination just said it must be there, despite the fact that all the samples should have been positive if contamination was widespread. They said that their samples were all negative so XMRV did not cause ME but they then claimed that the positive samples were because of contamination. Does not compute!

Koalas are dying from a mouse leukaemia like virus, but it is very difficult to detect not at all the easy way they claimed it should be if it was involved in human ill health.

I don't think XMRV is the cause of ME but I can't see how we can avoid having a mouse leukaemia like virus given most mammals do when we have lived in close proximity with mice for generations.

 

This is a painful part of our recent history, and i wonder why is it necessary to bring it back to the surface?