STUDY:

JOURNAL: Journal of Medical Virology, December 2003

AUTHORS: Dr. Bruno Pozzetto

ABSTRACT: A persistent enterovirus infection in muscles may be to blame for some cases of chronic fatigue syndrome (sometimes called fibromyalgia) and others with chronic inflammatory muscle disease.

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COMMENTARY: They team detected genetic material (specifically RNA) from enteroviruses in 20 percent of muscle biopsies from patients with chronic inflammatory muscle diseases and 13 percent of patients with fibromyalgia/chronic fatigue syndrome, but not from healthy volunteers.

The findings favor a persistent infection involving defective viral replication as a cause of these conditions.

Such infections have been documented in the heart, with possible involvement in heart enlargement; in pancreatic cells, possibly linked to juvenile diabetes; and in the central nervous system in association with a syndrome that afflicts aging survivors of polio, the researcher explained. However, the link between these diseases, as well as chronic inflammatory muscle diseases, and viral persistence is not clear.

Three patients with chronic inflammatory muscle disease and four patients with fibromyalgia/chronic fatigue syndrome were positive for enterovirus RNA.