I looked up some of the molecular biology re retroviruses.The reverse transcriptase of a retovius has no proofreading ability leading to considerable variation in the dna sequences of the inserted genome.In short the viruses drift all over the place and produce antigenic shifts similar to the flu virus this with a slow replication rate ,fast degredation in sera make xmrv one difficult bug to detect unless you target the specific deletion sequence in the env gene -this is the only way fto know for sure(if such a thing really exists) that its there and you dont have an endogenous virus this bug is a doozy -on the face of it relatively simple but with real twits in its replication process-----if you dont really understand this virus--designing a study to find it is really tricky-It doesn,t behave like Viruses of this type are supposed to----how it got detected in the first place amazes me----If anything can be tagged as a stealth virus this is it!.
My understanding is that this is the reason the pol gene is often used for detection in retroviral research. However WPI did not use pol and claims there is very little mutation of XMRV. So therefore they used gag and in one replication they used env. So I'm not sure how your comments connect to this specific XMRV finding...if XMRV is slow mutation. Also, the problems with degredation are apparently manageable as positives are being found by VIP Dx with samples shipped overnight.
I,ve always thought that ME should be called mitochondrial encephalopathy-----the symptoms of MLAS, a known mitochondrial disorde,r and ME/CFS are virtually the same, virus gets in --immune system activated hpa axis down mitochondrial damage immune system permanently swiched on hpa axis stays down complete autonomic deregulation encephalopathy-------it certainly explains the whole range of symptoms
That is an interesting name idea. MELAS does not sound like CFS, since it is actual dementia and not just brain fog. But one thing is for certain, CFS is not a 'syndrome', I would call it some type of spectrum disorder. ME fits in the spectrum along with probably a dozen other conditions.