Bacterial and Viral Co-Infections in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS/ME) Patients

A majority of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) patients have systemic bacterial and viral infections. In our study of 200 CFS patients we found a high prevalence (52%) of mycoplasmal infections. Using forensic polymerase chain reaction we also examined whether these same CFS patients showed evidence of co-infections with various mycoplasmas, Chlamydia pneumoniae and/or Human Herpes Virus-6 (HHV-6). We found that 7.5% of the patients had C. pneumoniae and 30.5% had HHV-6 infections. Since the presence of one or more infections may predispose patients to other infections, we examined the prevalence of C. pneumoniae and HHV-6 infections in mycoplasma-positive and –negative patients. Unexpectedly, we found that the incidence of C. pneumoniae or HHV-6 was similar in mycoplasma-positive and -negative patients. Also, the incidence of C. pneumoniae in HHV-6-positive and –negative patients was similar. Control subjects had low rates of mycoplasmal (6%), HHV-6 (9%) or chlamydial (1%) infections, and there were no co-infections in control subjects. Differences in bacterial and/or viral infections in CFS patients compared to control subjects were significant (P<0.001). The results indicate that a very large subset of CFS patients show evidence of bacterial and viral coinfections.