They keep looking for markers in the blood and coming up with nothing - time after time - tests after test - study after study and nothing. I really don't think they are looking in the right place - the condition has severe neurological symptoms - it's much more difficult to look at the spine, nerves and brain but that seems to be where the disease lies. They've dissected a couple of Spinal chords from dead ME patients in the last five years and bingo! In both cases the found inflammation of the nerve root ganglia - similar to that seen during an active infection of the nerve. Hello science community - ME is offering itself on a plate and few researchers are following it up. I mean is it just me or does the spinal/neuro/Dorsal root ganglia seem a pretty good bet - 2 dissections - 2 solid bio-markers for ME that explains the pain suffered. Thousands of blood samples - zero in the way of positive bio-markers.

This is good point, Joseph. Shingles is caused by a virus that resides in nerve tissue for years after an initial systemic infection as chicken pox. I don't know if the virus shows up in blood samples while it's dormant, I would guess not.

So it is certainly possible for a pathogenic virus to inhabit nerve tissue preferentially, and stay there for the lifetime of the infected person.