Barnes, Eleanor, Flanagan, Peter, Brown, Anthony et al. · The Journal of infectious diseases · 2010 · DOI
In 2010, researchers tested 230 people with HIV or hepatitis C to see if they carried a virus called XMRV, which had recently been suggested as a possible cause of chronic fatigue syndrome. They found no trace of XMRV in blood samples or immune cells, and people's immune systems showed no signs of having fought off this virus. This suggested that XMRV was not common in people with these blood-borne infections.
Early reports linked XMRV to chronic fatigue syndrome, generating significant hope but also concern among ME/CFS patients. This negative finding from a well-characterized clinical cohort provided important evidence questioning the initial XMRV-ME/CFS association, informing ongoing discussions about viral contributions to the disease and the reliability of initial claims.
This study does not prove that XMRV has no role in ME/CFS, as it did not directly test ME/CFS patients—it only examined people with HIV and hepatitis C. The failure to detect XMRV in this specific population does not exclude its presence in other populations or disease contexts. It also does not establish whether XMRV detection methods used in earlier studies were reliable or valid.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
The first block is for the primary paper and is the citation you should use in research work. The atlas-snapshot line only applies if you are specifically referring to this atlas’s reading of the paper on the date shown.
Primary citation
Barnes, Eleanor, Flanagan, Peter, Brown, Anthony, Robinson, Nicola, Brown, Helen, McClure, Myra, et al. (2010). Failure to detect xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus in blood of individuals at high risk of blood-borne viral infections.. The Journal of infectious diseases. https://doi.org/10.1086/657167
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-barnes-2010-failure-detect,
author = {Barnes, Eleanor and Flanagan, Peter and Brown, Anthony and Robinson, Nicola and Brown, Helen and McClure, Myra and Oxenius, Annette and Collier, Jane and Weber, Jonathan and Günthard, Huldrych F and Hirschel, Bernard and Fidler, Sarah and Phillips, Rodney and Frater, John},
title = {Failure to detect xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus in blood of individuals at high risk of blood-borne viral infections.},
journal = {The Journal of infectious diseases},
year = {2010},
doi = {10.1086/657167},
note = {PubMed: 20936982},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/barnes-2010-failure-detect},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-29. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/barnes-2010-failure-detect
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