Virus seen in muscle from chronic fatigue patients

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Virus seen in muscle from chronic fatigue patients

Last Updated: 2004-01-02 15:47:16 -0400 (Reuters Health)

By Will Boggs, MD

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A persistent enterovirus infection in

muscles may be to blame for some cases of chronic fatigue syndrome

(sometimes called fibromyalgia) and others with chronic inflammatory

muscle disease, a French team reports.

They detected genetic material (specifically RNA) from enteroviruses in

20 percent of muscle biopsies from patients with chronic inflammatory

muscle diseases and 13 percent of patients with fibromyalgia/chronic

fatigue syndrome, but not from healthy volunteers.

The findings favor a persistent infection involving defective viral

replication as a cause of these conditions.

" The persistence of defective or infectious enteroviruses is well

established for a lot of organs, " Dr. Bruno Pozzetto from the University

Hospital Center of Saint-Etienne, France, told Reuters Health.

Such infections have been documented in the heart, with possible

involvement in heart enlargement; in pancreatic cells, possibly linked

to juvenile diabetes; and in the central nervous system in association

with a syndrome that afflicts aging survivors of polio, the researcher

explained. " However, the link between these diseases, as well as chronic

inflammatory muscle diseases, and viral persistence is not clear. "

Pozzetto and colleagues investigated the presence of enterovirus in

skeletal muscle biopsies from 15 patients with chronic inflammatory

muscle diseases, 30 patients with fibromyalgia/chronic fatigue syndrome,

and 29 healthy subjects to test their hypothesis that skeletal muscle

may play host to persistent enteroviral infection.

Three patients with chronic inflammatory muscle disease and four

patients with fibromyalgia/chronic fatigue syndrome were positive for

enterovirus RNA, the team reports in the Journal of Medical Virology.

None of the muscle biopsies in this study contained a particular viral

protein, the researchers note, which " suggests a defective viral

replication. "

It is too early to derive implications for treatment from these results,

Pozzetto said.

However, he noted that so-called sackie B viruses seem to play a key

role in persistent muscular infections. " To prevent this persistence, an

inactivated vaccine directed towards these viruses could be indicated. "

Also, an antiviral agent called pleconaril, " acting during the early

phases of the viral cycle, could also be useful in muscular diseases

clearly associated with enterovirus. " This is being tried in some cases

of heart-muscle enlargement, Pozzetto said, but " it is too early to

answer for muscular diseases. "

SOURCE: Journal of Medical Virology, December 2003.