XMRV and public health: the retroviral genome is not a suitable template for diagnostic PCR and its association with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) appears unreliable

The paper discuss the controversial association between ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and XMRV and propose that a major role in the unreliability of the results was played by the XMRV genomic composition in itself. To this regard, bioinformatic analyses are presented that show: (i) aspecific, spurious annealings of the available primers in multiple homologous sites of the human genome; (ii) strict homologies between of whole XMRV genome and interspersed repetitive elements widespread in mammalian genomes. To further detail this scenario, we screen several human and mammalian samples by using both published and newly designed primers. The experimental data confirm that available primers are far from being selective and specific. In conclusion, the occurrence of highly 21 conserved, repeated DNA sequences in the XMRV genome deeply undermines the reliability of diagnostic PCRs by leading to artefactual and spurious amplifications. Together with all the other evidences, this makes the association between the XMRV retrovirus and CFS totally unreliable