Another negative XMRV study: Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Patients

[LJS]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21509625

OBJECTIVES:
Xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV)-specific proviral DNA has been recently detected in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome. Since chronic fatigue is commonly reported in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) we aimed at testing the presence of this virus in these patients.

METHODS:
Ninety-five SLE patients, 45 of whom had a Fatigue Severity Scale score higher than 3, were included. Molecular analyses were performed by PCR from DNA obtained from the whole blood of both SLE patients and 50 healthy controls.

RESULTS:
None of the 145 samples analyzed yielded the specific XMRV PCR product.

CONCLUSIONS:
We conclude that XMRV is not detected in blood neither from SLE patients nor from healthy controls. It leads to infer that other environmental and biological triggers (different from XMRV) may account for the increased levels of fatigue over the course of SLE.

 

[eric_s]

That's interesting because it's from Barcelona, where there is another group that has found XMRV earlier (IrsiCaixa). The names in this study are not the same and also it's another hospital. So there does not seem to be an apparent connection between those two teams. There was also a group in Madrid that was not able to find XMRV.

In a couple of weeks i might be able to give you an update of what's going on at IrsiCaixa. I think it would be interesting to see what they are thinking/doing/planning to do.