I think the HIV paper quoted earlier in the thread might be even more promising than the Pridgen paper, as it seems to suggest a mechanism (LPS causing Cox-2, which then allows herpes virus re-activation) that could link the work of those specialists who focus mainly on bacteria (KDM, Horowitz...) with those who focus mainly on viruses (Lerner, Montoya, Pridgen...). Of course the increase in LPS then needs to be explained, which I guess is where the gut (KDM, Lipkin) comes in...I would like someone smarter than me to tell me where auto-immunity might fit into this (I read the latest KDM paper, but I'm not scientifically literate enough to understand it). That would only leave the trigger, which seems to be HIV in the paper mentioned above, but in ME/CFS could be anything (virus, bacteria, some other mechanism?) that causes immune dysregulation.