Physicians at The Center see many

chronically ill patients with the complaint of “fatigue. ” If the physical, history and preliminary laboratory tests (e.g., “atypi-cal lymphocytes ” on the WBC differen-tial) warrant, the physician will order an-tibody titers for Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) viral capsid antigen (EBV VCA-IgG) and early antigen (EBV EA-IgG). Elevated EBV EA-IgG anti-bodies suggest recent or chronic-active infection and become undetectable weeks to months after on-set. Elevated EBV-IgG antibodies suggest a past infection. In the patient population treated at The Center, elevated EBV antibody titer is a common finding. During a recent 33 day period, 32 patients seen at The Center had serological evidence of current, re-cent or past infection with EBV (Table 1). Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), a member of the herpes group, infects many normal individuals through the B lymphocytes. The data in Table 1 tends to confirm this, 31 of the patients (97%)had antibody titers suggestive of past infection with EBV. If these patients have a competent immune system, the spread of the infection is pre-vented by TC cells and antibody which eliminate infected cells and virus. Most normal adults carry EBV throughout life with no ill effects (these patients will usu-ally show an elevated EBV VCA-IgG, Table 1). Exceptions to this, of course, are patients who develop infectious mononu-cleosis. This disease is spread by healthy viral carriers via oropharyngeal shedding of EBV, usually through close salivary contact