Abstract

Background: The recent identification of murine leukemia virus (MLV)-related viruses in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) has aroused much interest, not least among sufferers. However, other studies failed to detect these viruses in CFS patients.
Methods: We wanted to establish a MLV-related virus real-time PCR for routine diagnostics.
Results: Our study identified false positive MLV-related virus results due to a contamination of Superscript III Platinum One-Step Quantitative RT-PCR System (Invitrogen).
Conclusions: This observation may be helpful to elucidate discrepant results for the detection of MLV-related virus like xenotropic MLV-related virus (XMRV) in recently published studies.

DOI: Clin. Lab. 2011;57:631-634