Abstract
BackgroundThe involvement of xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) in prostate cancer (PC) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is disputed as its reported prevalence ranges from 0% to 25% in PC cases and from 0% to more than 80% in CFS cases. To evaluate the risk of XMRV infection during blood transfusion in Japan, we screened three populations--healthy donors (n = 500), patients with PC (n = 67), and patients with CFS (n = 100)--for antibodies against XMRV proteins in freshly collected blood samples. We also examined blood samples of viral antibody-positive patients with PC and all (both antibody-positive and antibody-negative) patients with CFS for XMRV DNA.ResultsAntibody screening by immunoblot analysis showed that a fraction of the cases (1.6-3.0%) possessed anti-Gag antibodies regardless of their gender or disease condition. Most of these antibodies were highly specific to XMRV Gag capsid protein, but none of the individuals in the three tested populations retained strong antibody responses to multiple XMRV proteins. In the viral antibody-positive PC patients, we occasionally detected XMRV genes in plasma and peripheral blood mononuclear cells but failed to isolate an infectious or full-length XMRV. Further, all CFS patients tested negative for XMRV DNA in peripheral blood mononuclear cells.ConclusionOur data show no solid evidence of XMRV infection in any of the three populations tested, implying that there is no association between the onset of PC or CFS and XMRV infection in Japan. However, the lack of adequate human specimens as a positive control in Ab screening and the limited sample size do not allow us to draw a firm conclusion.
Highlights
Plasma samples of viral Ab-positive prostate cancer (PC) patients were further screened for xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) RNA
peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) of PC patients whose plasma was positive for XMRV RNA were examined for the presence of XMRV genes and for RNASEL mutations in genomic DNA [1,18]
Plasma samples of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) patients were simultaneously screened for XMRV Abs and genomic DNA according to published methods [1,2,6]
Summary
The involvement of xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) in prostate cancer (PC) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is disputed as its reported prevalence ranges from 0% to 25% in PC cases and from 0% to more than 80% in CFS cases. To evaluate the risk of XMRV infection during blood transfusion in Japan, we screened three populations–healthy donors (n = 500), patients with PC (n = 67), and patients with CFS (n = 100)–for antibodies against XMRV proteins in freshly collected blood samples. We found that a proportion of the donors and patients had Abs against the XMRV Gag capsid (CA), but XMRV genes were barely detectable. These results suggest that the presence of human infection with XMRV or XMRV-related viruses in Japan cannot be denied, such infection is likely to be limited
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