ABSTRACT
Xenotropic murine leukemia virus (MLV)-related virus (XMRV) has been amplified from human prostate cancer and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) patient samples. Other studies failed to replicate these findings and suggested PCR contamination with a prostate cancer cell line, 22Rv1, as a likely source. MLV-like sequences have also been detected in CFS patients in longitudinal samples 15 years apart. Here, we tested whether sequence data from these samples are consistent with viral evolution. Our phylogenetic analyses strongly reject a model of within-patient evolution and demonstrate that the sequences from the first and second time points represent distinct endogenous murine retroviruses, suggesting contamination.
FOOTNOTES
- Received 22 April 2011.
- Accepted 1 August 2011.
- Accepted manuscript posted online 17 August 2011.
↵‡ Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/JVI.00827-11.
- Copyright © 2011, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.