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Ah yes I see now. Strange decision.

The paper does write: "Recorded signals included electrocardiogram, blood pressure, respiratory movement, end-tidal CO2, respiratory rate, and CBFv in the middle cerebral artery using Transcranial Doppler."

Looks like an interesting study with a large sample sizes and multiple illnesses. But you can read the results two-ways: the questionnaires might be unreliable indicators of objective autonomic testing, or the things measured with the objective tests do a poor job at explaining the patients...

Then there is the issue that they lumped everything together, regardless of the content of the CBT. One is mindfullness based cognitive therapy, another is pretty much relationship-therapy, some forms of CBT are focused on stress reduction while others (most of them) try to cure patients by...

The review also ignored objective outcomes and long-term results of for example the PACE trials which all found no effect. Also frustrating that they interpret drop-out rates as an indicator of acceptance of CBT. I know of many patients who feel forced to undergo these 'rehabilitative'...

Here's their risk of bias assessment of fatigue, post-treatment taken from the supplementary material: I don't understand why some trials received a 'low' score for Bias due to measurement of the outcome because these were all subjective outcomes used in unblinded trials. There doesn't seem to...

I noticed that in some of the trials they included, only a minority of patients met CFS criteria. I only read the review once but could not find any mention of this, which is rather misleading. Here are for example, some quotes from the trials: Huibers et al. 2004 “At baseline, 66 patients...

It does highlight that some patients are so severe that they cannot physically tolerate the presence of others even though mentally they feel isolated and feel the need to be with their loves ones. I don't think this been highlighted in the scientific literature although it is a common issue...

Thanks for posting @Wyva and @Andy I think they got funding from the Horizon Europe call 'Relationship between infections and non-communicable diseases'. The European ME Coalition (EMEC) tried to highlighted this call as a potential funding source for ME/CFS research. Great to hear that this...

Haven't looked into the ALS example closely, but I think there is a big risk of presenting a medication as more plausible/promising than it really is.

For anyone struggling (like me) to find the sample size: A total of eight ME/CFS patients (six female (F) and two male (M); median age, 33 years; range, 22–52 years) and seven healthy controls (HC) (five F and two M; median age, 33 years; range, 23–63) were included.

These suggests that they did not see PEM in their deconditioned participants and that the difference with ME/CFS was clear.

Tweets like these: https://twitter.com/RobWust/status/1743248934468735295

This press release by their university gives some brief info: All experiments, meals, and leisure activities took place lying down. Participants were restricted in their movements, reducing the strain on muscles. "The beds were inclined at an angle of 6 degrees, with the head lower than the...

Perhaps it was just coincidence that C7 was the protein that had the starkest difference. They did find other proteins involved in the classical and alternative complement pathway to be abnormal in LC patients with some confirmation in their independent Mount Sinai cohort. The preprint by the...

The Spanish ME/CFS study found increased levels of circulating complement factor C1q but the LC preprint mentioned above found these C1q to be decreased. An Austrian ME/CFS study found reduced Mannose-Binding Lectin (MBL) but this Science paper on LC did not find it to be abnormal. So I don't...

Found this simplified overview in a YouTube video that gives an introduction to the complement system.

That other LC study on the complement system (the preprint by Paul Morgan et al.) also found activation of the classical and alternative but not the lectin pathway although the intermediary proteins they measured differed somewhat. I don't see for example c7 or the the C5bC6 complex mentioned...

Trying to get an overview of all the tests they did in this study. They started with analysing proteins using the ‘SomaScan platform’. This uses aptamers: DNA or RNA-molecules that bind to specific protein targets a bit like antibodies do. With this method they could screen more than 6000...

Interesting paper. So they found differences in the grey but not the white matter and these differences indicated immune-suppressed microglia rather than immune-activated microglia. These researchers have now received funding to collect and study post-mortem brain samples of ME/CFS (EDIT: as...