Elaine DeFreitas

Elaine DeFreiras was a researcher at the Wistar Institute who lodged a patent for the diagnosis and treatment of Chronic Fatigue Immune Deficiency Syndrome, which she stated was caused by a virus she termed CAV, CFIDS-Associated Virus. The National CFIDS Foundation summarised some of the history surrounding the DeFreitas work in an undated article.

Notable studies

• 1991, Retroviral sequences related to human T-lymphotropic virus type II in patients with chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome (Elaine DeFreitas, Hilliard B, Paul Cheney, David Bell, Kiggundu E, Sankey D, Wroblewska Z, Palladino M, Woodward JP, Koprowski H)

Talks and interviews

• 1996, Dr DeFreitas is included in the TV segment Sick and Tired - Incline Village Outbreak.

Media Coverage

• 1990, a summary of an edition of CFIDS Chronicle stated "This Chronicle issue reported on research linking CFS to a human retrovirus called HTLV-2 by Dr. Elaine DeFreitas based on patient samples provided by Dr. David Bell and Dr. Paul Cheney. 23 of 30 samples from CFS patients tested positive for genes resembling HTLV-2, while none of the samples from 20 healthy subjects were positive. There was heavy media coverage of these early stage results by USA Today, Newsweek, the New York Times and other major dailies and broadcast networks. Later studies testing this association, including blinded case-control studies, found positives in equal percentages among cases and controls and the initial discovery was never validated.".
• 1990, Does a retrovirus explain fatigue syndrome puzzle? (Science Magazine, Sep 14)
• 1990, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (Newsweek, Nov 11)
• 1992, Previously unknown virus found (Ocala Star-Banner, 17 March)
• 1996, A Chronic Fatigue Cover-Up? (Newsweek, Apr 21)

Online presence

• PubMed

See also

• Osler's Web
• Plague
• David Bell
• Paul Cheney