A second publication links CFS even closer to a novel family of retroviruses – What do we call them?

On the 23rd of August 2010, a PNAS on-line publication (Lo et al) was published out of the NIH and the FDA confirming Judy Mikovits’ October 2009 Science papers’ assertion that a Mouse Leukemia Virus (MLV)-related retrovirus (RV) is strongly linked to CFS. With an 87% association of this novel RV with CFS, the new study makes the association much tighter with CFS and ever closer to a possible causation claim as we are still using first generation testing and the biology of these RV agents is still poorly understood. The MLV-related human RV reservoir is still unknown and there appears to be only low copy numbers in blood making detection difficult and very methodology dependent. Given that the CFS-related strain reported in PNAS is not related to XMRV, a mouse virus, but rather to another mouse virus (PMRV) from the same family of mouse viruses suggests that a name change is in order to describe this family of novel “human” retroviruses. We propose the name Human Gammaretovirus or GRV’s for short with some agreement from my colleagues around the world.