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No Evidence of XMRV or Related Retroviruses in a London HIV-1-Positive Patient Cohort

Gray, ER; Garson, JA; Breuer, J; Edwards, S; Kellam, P; Pillay, D; Towers, GJ; (2011) No Evidence of XMRV or Related Retroviruses in a London HIV-1-Positive Patient Cohort. PLOS ONE , 6 (3) , Article e18096. 10.1371/journal.pone.0018096. Green open access

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Abstract

Background: Several studies have implicated a recently discovered gammaretrovirus, XMRV (Xenotropic murine leukaemia virus-related virus), in chronic fatigue syndrome and prostate cancer, though whether as causative agent or opportunistic infection is unclear. It has also been suggested that the virus can be found circulating amongst the general population. The discovery has been controversial, with conflicting results from attempts to reproduce the original studies.Methodology/Principal Findings: We extracted peripheral blood DNA from a cohort of 540 HIV-1-positive patients (approximately 20% of whom have never been on anti-retroviral treatment) and determined the presence of XMRV and related viruses using TaqMan PCR. While we were able to amplify as few as 5 copies of positive control DNA, we did not find any positive samples in the patient cohort.Conclusions/Significance: In view of these negative findings in this highly susceptible group, we conclude that it is unlikely that XMRV or related viruses are circulating at a significant level, if at all, in HIV-1-positive patients in London or in the general population.

Type: Article
Title: No Evidence of XMRV or Related Retroviruses in a London HIV-1-Positive Patient Cohort
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0018096
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0018096
Language: English
Additional information: © 2011 Gray et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This work was undertaken at UCLH/UCL, which received a proportion of funding from the Department of Health's NIHR Biomedical Research Centres funding scheme. Additional funding was provided by a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellowship WT090940 to GJT and the Medical Research Council. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Keywords: VIRUS-RELATED VIRUS, CHRONIC-FATIGUE-SYNDROME, PROSTATE-CANCER, INFECTIOUS RETROVIRUS, BLOOD-CELLS, MOUSE DNA, CONTAMINATION, SEQUENCES, DISEASE, COINFECTION
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences > Div of Infection and Immunity
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health > Infection, Immunity and Inflammation Dept
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > London Centre for Nanotechnology
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1302558
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