Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Viral Infections

The dream of all clinicians and researchers is to give their name to an illness, whatever the technique used to make the discovery. During the 20th century and the early part of the 21st century, several viruses have been identified by different procedures. Using electron microscopy, Epstein and Barr (Epstein et al., 1965) detected a Herpes virus in the lymphoid cells of a native African boy with a jaw tumor identified by the surgeon, Denis Burkitt (Burkitt, 1962). A few years later, using electrosyneresis, Blumberg detected the Hepatitis B antigen in the blood of an Australian aborigine (Blumberg et al., 1967, 1965). This immunological procedure was also used in 1975 by Yvonne Cossart to detect human parvovirus B19 in the serum of a blood donor in London (Cossart et al., 1975).