Blood Banks Urged To Discourage Cfs

Blood Banks Urged to Discourage Chronic Fatigue Patients From Giving Blood

Blood banks should ask patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) not to donate blood or blood products because they may pass on a virus suspected of causing the elusive syndrome. That's the new advice coming from the AABB, an international association formerly known as the American Association of Blood Banks. The recommendation is based on a controversial paper published last year in Science that suggested that a human retrovirus may play a role in CFS.

Some scientists say the decision is premature, because the evidence for the link between xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) and CFS is tenuous, and three teams have failed to replicate the findings. "It's way too early for this. They're just spreading fear," says Jos van der Meer, a CFS researcher at Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre in the Netherlands. "Let's do some more serious science first."

Read more: http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/06/blood-banks-urged-to-discourage.html