Often derided as lazy or crazy, for decades people suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome have faced a stigma of doubt, ridicule and legal hassles over their condition.

But a new study, to be published Friday in the journal Science, shows the ailment is almost certainly caused by a virus, a close relative of HIV, and might be treatable with current AIDS medications.

Judy Mikovits, the senior study author, says that virtually all of the 101 chronic fatigue sufferers she tested for the study were infected with a retrovirus known as XMRV.

And the chance that the virus was there by accident in chronic fatigue sufferers was "infinitesimally small," especially since it was not found in the vast majority of healthy people also tested by researchers.

"It undoubtedly causes some of the symptoms that are associated with it (chronic fatigue)," says Mikovits, research director of Nevada's Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-immune Diseases.

"It's a true human infection," she says.

She also says these findings will help bust the stigma that imposes a duel burden on those with the disease, which is also known as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis.

"We're delighted because the stigma that's gone on with this, the idea that it's somehow psychiatric or you are unable to handle stress...would be gone."

Toronto lawyer Richard Bogoroch agrees, saying chronic fatigue patients also face legal discrimination, with employers and insurance companies often doubting their disease.

"I can tell you in my experience these are real complaints and this is wonderful that they've found an objective marker," says Bogoroch, who has fought many chronic fatigue compensation cases.

"Many people in my experience with chronic fatigue...have had their creditability doubted – they're either malingerers or they're not as injured as they say they are. Their whole credibility and legitimacy has been called into question."

Mikovits says that, like HIV, the virus probably attacks some elements of the immune system, and is passed on through bodily fluids.

"It looks to us just like an HIV in that it sets up an immune deficiency (that causes) a spectrum of disorders," Mikovits says.

"And it plays out for different people in different ways just like HIV."

But unlike the AIDS virus, which will eventually attack anyone who contracts it, XMRV likely damages only those people with a genetic or physiological susceptibility to the ailment.

"You can be infected and be well," she says.

Mikovits says the virus may also attack key mechanisms that form red blood cells, the oxygen bearing workhorses that fuel all the tissues in our bodies.

"The whole fatigue thing could well be an inability to appropriately then develop red blood cells," she says.

"So you'd (alter) oxygen carrying capacity which we've seen in a lot of the patients...just plain out oxygen depletion."

Just as there were vocal detractors of the HIV-AIDS connection when that virus was discovered two decades ago, people will question the retroviral foundation of chronic fatigue, Mikovits says.

But, she says, all of the various symptoms associated with the syndrome could be caused by immune and blood damage commonly associated with retroviral infections.

"As I go through the clinical symptoms...there isn't one that I have found so far that couldn't be explained by infection with this virus."

Canadian Institutes of Health Research scientist Marc-Andre Langlois agrees, saying many of the symptoms associated with chronic fatigue could be explained by retroviral infections.

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Indeed, Langlois, a University of Ottawa retroviral expert, says more and more diseases, such as prostate cancer, have suspected connections with these pathogens.

"And what's good about that is that because of the efforts in the HIV field, retroviruses are treatable," he says.

"So it immediately gives the clinicians working in this field new possibilities of treatment. Instead of treating these patients for depression...you could try giving them anti-retrovirals."

There are some 340,000 people in this country diagnosed with chronic fatigue, according to Statistics Canada.

Though they vary widely, symptoms can include fatigue, loss of memory or concentration, unexplained muscle and joint pain, headaches, poor sleep and extreme exhaustion after physical or mental exercise.

And as typical with viral infections, the symptoms of chronic fatigue often come on suddenly and with full force," Mikovits says.

"There really are outbreaks, where they remember the day they got sick," she says.

Like the HIV, the fatigue retrovirus would be spread through bodily fluids like blood or semen, and is likely to lurk in the country's transfusion blood supply, Mikovits says.

"We actually have a couple of patients who likely acquired the disease and the virus...through a transfusion process," she says.

Mikovits says officials in charge of blood safety will likely have to address the possibility that treatments meant to kill HIV in transfusion products do not get rid of the XMRV virus.

As a retrovirus some of the drugs that work to tamp HIV levels down in the body would likely help chronic fatigue patients.

And because these anti-retroviral drugs have already been approved for human usage, they won't be subject to the onerous regulatory testing that could keep them out of human chronic fatigue trials for years, Mikovits says.

"I think there are likely going to be drugs out there from our experience with HIV that are (government) approved and that we can just start clinical trials with," she says.

"Treatment is not going to be five to 10 years away, but can be rapid. Within the next year or two."