CMV

[Ian A. York]

In article <3pqh54$9t7 at newshound.uidaho.edu> lhilbert at crow.csrv.uidaho.edu (Hilbert Leslie) writes:

>One of the common infections after transplantation was CMV.  Since that 
>time some of the other nutrition techs I worked with have come down with 
>"chronic fatigue syndrome" and blame it on CMV exposure, and some of them 
>claim to have been tested and to show antibodies (ie, past exposure or 

Something like 80-90% of all people are presently infected with CMV.  
It's ubiquitous.  In most people, it remains latent, or at least the 
infections are held in check and it doesn't appear to cause any 
problems.  In transplant patients, the immune suppression allows 
reactivation of the infections and it is a serious problem.  However, 
finding antibodies to CMV is hardly an exciting or unusual observation.

In the early days of chronic fatigue, CMV infection was one of the 
suspects.  Of course, the difficulty of these studies should be obvious; 
if everyone already has it, how can you determine if it's a problem?  
Later studies determined that the frequency of CMV infection in CFS 
patients was pretty well the same as in unaffected people.  I believe 
that CMV is not considered to be a probably cause of CFS any more.

If I'm wrong, I'm sure Cammilla will correct me.

Ian
-- 
Ian York   (york at mbcrr.harvard.edu)
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, 44 Binney St., Boston MA 02115
Phone (617)-632-3921     Fax  (617)-632-2627