XMRV Study in the UK
Thought I’d post this link. I heard about the study from my ME specialist in December 2009…
UK XMRV Study Results Published
Interesting that the results were negative… I wonder if it is quite telling about the subject sampling that was used in the research by the WPI? Or, as the article states, the reasearch methods used in the UK study were not suitable for detecting the XMRV. The scientist in me thinks that surely money would not have been spent on a research study where the validity (if not the reliability) of the techniques used were in doubt! Or am I just being naiive about researchers wasting funding on nonsense studies?!
06/01/2010 at 11:32 pm
I think what the article is saying is that the techniques used to try to identify XMRV were different than the original study. My understanding is that the original study in Science was VERY stringent. I think what we need to see now is if anyone can duplicate the findings of the WPI study using the same techniques. We’ll see … but it does put a little douse of reality on our hopeful fires!
07/01/2010 at 12:06 am
Both the CFIDS Association and now WPI have now come out with public statements that the UK organization used different testing methods and different patient selection criteria. WPI also stated that the UK group rushed their results into print without the same kinds of verification methods used in the first XMRV study, so it’s looking like this new study just isn’t valid as a replication study.
Never a dull moment, huh?
Sue
08/01/2010 at 3:01 am
Oh wow. Thanks for posting this. I’d read about the UK study and seen the WPI’s brief statement, but I hadn’t seen the elaborated list of confounding variables.
From the beginning, I thought it likely that their patient selection criteria was suspect. Now I know not to take their results seriously at all.