The journal Science has asked the authors of a 2009 research paper, which linked chronic fatigue syndrome to a virus, to withdraw their findings.
It has also published an editorial saying the validity of the study was “seriously in question”. In 2009, a study at the Whittemore Peterson Institute was published in Science which showed DNA from a mouse virus, XMRV, was present in 67 per cent patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, but in only four per cent of the general population.
The authors of the institute, affiliated to the University of Nevada in the US, say they were extremely disappointed and the editorial was premature.
But Science’s editor-in-chief, Bruce Alberts, says at least 10 studies had since failed to reproduce the results claimed by the Institute study.