Abstract:
Although chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is known to be the syndrome that begins with an acute flu-like illness that may be due to the exposure to an infectious agent, there has been no convincing evidence on the causative agents.
Recently, human T-lymphotropic virus type II (HTLV-II)-like virus has been reported to be associated with the CFS by using HTLV Western blot analysis and polymerase chain reaction. However, some investigators could not detect HTLV-II by indirect immunofluorescence analysis.
Lately, CFS patients have been reported in Japan. We detected all 30 tested patients with CFS were seronegative for HTLV-II, HTLV-I and HIV by specific peptide ELISA and Western blot. Further, PCR analysis was negative for HTLV-II and retrovirus was not detected by coculture method with patients’ PBMC. Thus, known human retrovirus infections do not cause a CFS in Japan.
Source: Honda M, Kitamura K, Nakasone T, Fukushima Y, Matsuda S, Nishioka K, Matsuda J, Hashimoto N, Yamazaki S. Japanese patients with chronic fatigue syndrome are negative for known retrovirus infections. Microbiol Immunol. 1993;37(10):779-84. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7507200