Phylogeny-directed search for murineleukemia virus-like retroviruses in vertebrate genomes & in ME/CFS & prostate cancer patients

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http://1.usa.gov/ytrFdV

PubMed

US National Library of Medicine

National Institutes of Health

Adv Virol. 2011;2011:341294. Epub 2011 Sep 4.

Phylogeny-directed search for murine

leukemia virus-like retroviruses in vertebrate

genomes and in patients suffering from

myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue

syndrome and prostate cancer.

Blomberg J, Sheikholvaezin A, Elfaitouri A,

Blomberg F, Sjösten A, Mattson Ulfstedt J,

Pipkorn R, Källander C, Ohrmalm C, Sperber G.

Section of Clinical Microbiology, Department of Medical

Sciences, Uppsala University, 751 05 Uppsala, Sweden.

Abstract

Gammaretrovirus-like sequences occur in most vertebrate

genomes.

Murine Leukemia Virus (MLV) like retroviruses (MLLVs) are

a subset, which may be pathogenic and spread

cross-species.

Retroviruses highly similar to MLLVs (xenotropic murine

retrovirus related virus (XMRV) and Human Mouse

retrovirus-like RetroViruses (HMRVs)) reported from patients

suffering from prostate cancer (PC) and myalgic

encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS)

raise the possibility that also humans have been infected.

Structurally intact, potentially infectious MLLVs occur in the

genomes of some mammals, especially mouse.

Mouse MLLVs contain three major groups.

One, MERV G3, contained MLVs and XMRV/HMRV.

Its presence in mouse DNA, and the abundance of

xenotropic MLVs in biologicals, is a source of false

positivity.

Theoretically, XMRV/HMRV could be one of several MLLV

transspecies infections.

MLLV pathobiology and diversity indicate optimal strategies

for investigating XMRV/HMRV in humans and raise ethical

concerns.

The alternatives that XMRV/HMRV may give a hard-to-detect

" stealth " infection, or that XMRV/HMRV never reached

humans, have to be considered.