NEW YORK — A 2009 study on chronic fatigue syndrome that led to a ban on blood donations from sufferers of the disease may have been spoiled by laboratory mistakes, according to the science magazine that published the research.

While the study linked the syndrome to the mouse virus XMRV, at least 10 trials since then haven’t been able to duplicate the results, the journal Science said in an editorial published Tuesday. New research also indicates that the blood samples used in 2009 likely were contaminated with the virus in the lab, Science said.

The study’s validity “is now seriously in question,” Bruce Alberts, editor-in-chief of Science, said in the editorial.

Science requested a voluntary retraction from the 2009 study’s authors, said spokeswoman Natasha Pinol in a telephone interview. Judy Mikovits, one of the study’s authors, contacted the journal Monday to inform them she disagreed with the editorial expression of concern, Pinol said.

A phone call to Mikovits’ office at the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease in Reno, Nev., wasn’t returned. Tara Trovato, spokeswoman for the institute, didn’t immediately return calls from Bloomberg for comment.

The study led the American Red Cross, the largest U.S. supplier of blood products, to announce in December 2010 that it would no longer allow donors with chronic fatigue syndrome. The National Institutes of Health is sponsoring studies to determine if a link between XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome can be confirmed.

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More than one million people in the United States have chronic fatigue syndrome, more than those with multiple sclerosis, lupus, or lung cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The condition, which saps people of energy for months or years, has no proven cause and mostly affects women ages 30 to 50, according to the National Institutes of Health. Women are four times more likely than men to develop the disease.

The study, published in October 2009, found XMRV in the blood of two-thirds of tissue samples taken from people with the condition and 3.7 percent of a group of healthy individuals. The trial was led by Vincent Lombardi of the Whittemore Institute, and Francis Ruscetti, a National Cancer Institute scientist in Frederick, Md.

Scientists led by Jay Levy, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said in a study Tuesday that the link was probably because chemicals and cell lines used in the lab where it was detected were contaminated with XMRV.

Levy’s group examined 61 patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, 43 of whom had been previously reported as infected with XMRV. Using a similar procedure to the original paper, the scientists tested the blood. They didn’t find any evidence of XMRV or any other mouse-related virus.

In addition, the Levy study demonstrated that human serum quickly kills the virus, making an infection unlikely.

“When that paper came out, I was totally surprised and suspicious,” Levy said Tuesday in a telephone interview.


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