Absence of xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus in blood cells of men at risk for and infected with HIV.

Xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus has been detected in blood cells of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome and in 3.7% of healthy controls from the same geographic region. We evaluated 996 men who were participants in the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study for xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus sequences in blood cells by means of a real-time quantitative PCR assay. Xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus was detected in none of the men on the basis of the absence of xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus DNA, suggesting that infection may be population-specific.