British researchers from Kings College and Imperial College London claim not to have found the XMRV virus in CFS patients they tested.

 Read Dr Jolly's comments on this report

During this past week the first so called Replicatory Paper on XMRV was released. ie this is a paper which reports on the results of a group trying to ascertain whether the results found in the WPI paper are correct or not. This group was made up of researchers from Kings College and Imperial College in London and the paper was produced in the Public Library of Science Journal. (PLoS One.) They found no evidence of XMRV in any of the CFS patients that they tested.

 On the surface this would appear to show that the first paper which found an association of XMRV with CFS is wrong. However it is too early to say this definitively. There has to be many experiments done by groups from around the world before some conclusion can be drawn. My guess is that any consensus about whether XMRV is related in "any" way to CFS could take from six months to a year. This is how science works. Firstly there is an initial paper which "discovers" something new. Then further research is done by other research groups around the world which either confirm or deny the original finding. Then scientists discuss all of the findings and eventually agree on the most likely answer. Over subsequent years even this can change as new knowledge comes to light. There is no absolute "truth" in science. Knowledge is always changing depending on the understanding of the universe at that time.

I am pointing this out to show that with this single result there is so far no reason for sufferers to be disappointed. It was always likely that the first replicatory papers to be released would most likely be negative in nature and this is what has happened. Hopefully positive papers (if there really is any connection with XMRV) will follow later. They are likely to take longer to be published as greater care must be taken to replicate the original paper exactly. It appears that the PLoS One paper did not use exactly the same technique and this could well explain the differing result. The Professor in charge of the research (Prof. Myra McClure) though claims that her technique should have demonstrated any XMRV if it was present. However to my mind an exact replication of the original technique is required. Also the group was headed by Simon Wessely, a psychiatrist whose previous research papers have virtually always suggested a psychiatric rather than biological cause for CFS.

Dr Ken Jolly

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Notes

Dr. Suzanne Vernon of  the CFIDS Association of America has asserted that the PloS One paper “should not be considered a valid attempt to replicate the findings described by Lombardi et al., in the 8 October 2009 Science article.” 

http://www.cfids.org/cfidslink/2010/010603.asp

 The Whittemore Peterson Institute have also issued a response.  “ This study did not duplicate the rigorous scientific techniques used by the WPI, the National Cancer Institute and the Cleveland Clinic, therefore it cannot be considered a replication study, nor can the results claim to be anything other than a failure not just to detect XMRV, but also a failure to suggest meaningful results.”

http://www.wpinstitute.org/news/docs/WPI_Erlwein_010610.pdf