Two papers linking XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome retracted

Mike posted on a paper refuting the possible link between XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome over a year ago.  Now it appears that both the 2009 Science paper and  2010 PNAS paper supporting such a link have been retracted.  The reasons for retraction of each paper appear to be very different.  For example, the story of the Science paper authors' possible image manipulation described by blogger Abbie Smith is pretty fascinating.  A great description of both retractions and related media reports can be found for both the Science and PNAS paper at Retraction Watch.  All of this is very unfortunate for the scientific community and especially the affected patients.

Sources:

Retraction of Lombardi et al., Science 326 (5952) 585-589 in Science 23 December 2011: Vol. 334 no. 6063 p. 1636 

NY Times, David Tuller 12/26/2011

h/t Ivan Oransky at Retraction Watch Blog 12/26/2011

XMRV and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Is there a link?

Several months ago a paper in Science linked Chronic Fatigue Syndrome to the xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV). Now a new study in Retrovirology by investigators at CDC refutes the Science paper. In the new study blood samples from 51 patients who met the CDC diagnostic criteria for CFS and 56 healthy control patients were tested via western blot, ELISA, and 2 different PCR assays for XMRV. None of the patients in either group were found to be positive by any of the methods. However, according to the Wall Street Journal there's yet another paper from investigators at the FDA and NIH, as of yet unpublished, that claims a link between XMRV and CFS. I don't know what to think except that this virus needs a new name--virus-related virus sounds dumb to me.