CFS -- Brain Virus?

Is chronic fatigue syndrome caused by a rare brain infection of a common, normally benign virus?

Journal: Med Hypotheses. 2008 Apr 24 [Epub ahead of print]

Author: Grinde B.

Affiliation: National Institute of Public Health, P.O. Box 4404,
Nydalen, 0403 Oslo, Norway.

NLM Citation: PMID: 18440157


Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a disabling disease of unknown
aetiology. A variety of factors have been suggested as possible causes.

Although the symptoms and clinical findings are heterogeneous, the
syndrome is sufficiently distinct, at least in relation to the more
obvious cases, that a common explanation seems likely.

In this paper, it is proposed that the disease is caused by a
ubiquitous, but normally benign virus, e.g., one of the circoviruses.
Circoviruses are chronically present in a majority of people, but are
rarely tested for diagnostically. Normally these viruses do not
penetrate the blood-brain barrier, but exceptions have been reported,
and related viruses cause disease in the central nervous system of animals.

The flu-like illness that often precedes the onset of CFS may either
suppress immune function, causing an increased viremia, and/or lower
the blood-brain barrier. In both cases the result may be that a virus
already present in the blood enters the brain.

It is well known that zoonotic viruses typically are more malignant
than viruses with a long history of host-virus evolution. Similarly,
a virus reaching an unfamiliar organ may cause particular problems.

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"Present, but rarely tested for" -- which is why they can't find anything wrong, because they're testing for the wrong things.  If they tested for the RIGHT things, they'd see in an instant that we're really sick, and it's a virus, not a psychiatric problem.

The person with me when I got sick ingenuously called it "brain fever".  The doctor ignored him, insisting the whole problem was that women just don't want to work.  Turns out, he was right, and the doctor was wrong ... the virus did, in fact, attack the brain.  But because the doctor didn't test for every virus under the sun, the doctor was able to say "all tests are normal", even when it was clear that the patient was not normal.