The finding of identical XMRV integration sites in patient samples and laboratory cell lines suggests that previous reports of XMRV in human prostate cancer were likely due to PCR contamination rather than genuine infection.
May explain prior XMRV-prostate cancer reports as contamination artifacts; challenges earlier associations and leaves open true human infection.
XMRV is a gammaretrovirus associated in some studies with human prostate cancer and chronic fatigue syndrome. Central to the hypothesis of XMRV as a human pathogen is the description of integration sites in DNA from prostate tumour tissues. Here we demonstrate that 2 of 14 patient-derived sites are identical to sites cloned in the same laboratory from experimentally infected DU145 cells. Identical integration sites have never previously been described in any retrovirus infection. We propose that the patient-derived sites are the result of PCR contamination. This observation further undermines the notion that XMRV is a genuine human pathogen.
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Garson et al. (2011) studied this question.
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