XMRV: exogenous and/or endogenous?

[fresh_eyes]

I think I got it, by George. Great explanation. I would love to have read it along with some illustrations drawn by Priscilla Gilman. You two would make a great team in writing a guide called XMRV Made Easy, or Endo and Exo Illustrated, or something like that. Anyway, good job George. And for those of you who haven't already, you might like to check out this website.

http://www.heaveninmyfoot.com/2009/10/xmrv.html

This is great, gracenote! I hadn't seen it before.

 

[Alice Band]

In 12 of these cases the CFS relatives were maternal, and in 10 they were paternal

from

Underhill RA, O’Gorman R. Prevalence of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome within families of CFS patients. J CFS 2006; 13(1):3-13.

Also from the same document (sorry it has lost the formatting)

Family members with CFS n/total % Family members with CFS mean (95% CI) p-value †
Spouses/partners 6 /186 3.2 (0.7 to 5.8) < 0.001
Offspring 12/235 5.1 (2.3 to 7.9) < 0.001
Parents & siblings 8/730 1.1 (0.34 to 1.84) < 0.02
All 1st degree relatives 20/965 2.1(1.2 to 3.0) < 0.001
2nd & 3rd degree relatives 24/3216 0.8 (0.45 to 1.05) < 0.02
All blood relatives 44/4181 1.1 (0.75 to 1.3) < 0.001

Maybe someone else can extrapolate from the data in that study. I think it came from Dr Jason. There are some interesting graphs

I don't know (for instance) what the significance of this is (bit it is unusual so I will mention it), the graph shows % of children with CFS and is split into male and female (approx 4% male and approx 6% female), now that is very different to the % male and female reported ratio we see in non-obviously parent CFS isn't that?

The graph also shows the data for male and female relatives 1st and 2nd & 3rd degree and the male female split is again a lot more even than I would have thought but not as close as the "offspring". It's hard to tell on the chart as the data is too small for the axis.

 

[fresh_eyes]

Thanks for posting this, Alice Band - do we know what criteria were used to define CFS in that study?

 

[Alice Band]

CFS under the CDC 1994 revised case definition

The subjects came from the New Jersey CFS Association

Interestingly, it also says (about the CDC CFS group)

"
Significant differences were seen between the prevalence of CFS in all groups of family members relative to that in the Chicago community sample reported by Jason et al
"

Also

as the proportion of female and male patients with CFS relatives was found to be similar (18% vs. 19%).