Search results

An excellent write up in Science magazine, which is probably one of the very best places to get coverage if you want to reach the wider scientific communities. Chris, Sonya and @Andy are all created from a press conference this morning. Thank you all...

GWAS is a field that had its problems in the early days – but unlike this field, for instance it got its house in order. And its replication record now is excellent. These genetic signals should stand the test of time. As the paper makes clear, there is work to do to firm up on a specific genes...

And the questionnaire data looking at comorbidities (not coal visitors!), symptoms and severity differences, and onset types, but nothing that suggested two different categories

Yes, though they have yet to analyse data for the sex chromosomes, which might be a more likely place to find any differences.

Shortened version– read the full blog here. Scientists, people with ME/CFS, and their charities came together to create DecodeME, the world's biggest ME/CFS study – and its results are striking. 18,000 people with ME/CFS gave their DNA, enabling DecodeME to reveal eight genetic signals for the...

That's great news

I just noticed that the window closes at the end of the month, will there be a new one announced following reporting of the results?

I don't think many have been found with much confidence. So this approach is likely to be chasing shadows.

is it possible that slow reaction times could have influence the finger tapping test in the Wallit "effort preference" experiment? I don't know how big the effect size is for reaction time, but it could be an important factor with ME/CFS performed badly @Karen Kirke

Yes, I can imagine it's a problem with online gaming, which is a pretty artificial situation. I've never heard anyone with this illness mentioned reaction time as a problem general conversation or discussion about symptoms. Could you be more specific, I'm curious?

I think a reaction time deficit is the most consistent finding in all cognitive testing (I wrote a blog about this years ago, but don't have the energy to find that now). On the other hand, nobody I know with this illness is ever complained about reaction time being a significant problem, so...

I don't know, I thought 0.4 was higher than you normally get from things like that. But I still think that using a sensible measure would give us a clear answer.

I agree that symptom count is a weird measure, and wouldn't expect it to show much, so r=0.4 is quite impressive. It would be great to see this work done measuring the overall symptom severity/burden on standing. Maybe there is something impressive to find here

As you say, the combinatorial principle is straightforward. The trick is finding a good way to search the "computational space". And that's where their proprietary, black box method comes in. Which means it's not possible to validate it. They point to quite a lot of evidence for validity in...

I agree with all of that. And this conversation is complicated by not knowing what dME will report. However, after the ambush of CP on R4, I think we can assume that SMC is likely to try to undermine DecodeME, regardless of its findings. It would be wise to be prepared for this. If the study...

Doesn't look like they've done Mendelian randomisation properly. At the heart of Mendelian randomisation is the "instrumental variable", IV. This is a genetic factor that you know impacts the outcome of interest. This is one example I know: – George Davey Smith, a pioneer of Mendelian...

Yes, I found the same thing. But how do we know the cases really do have ME/CFS? UKB has over 5000 CFS cases, but the recent Samms/Ponting paper on cohort quality, showed there were numerous concerning features of the data. I'm not sure there is better data out there (though there is a Finnish...

The usual question applies: how good is the underlying data? There is only one source of trustworthy ME/CFS GWAS data I know of, and it hasn't reported yet or made its data available more widely for GWAS analysis

Of course we do, and I'm well aware of that. And yet it hasn't gone away, not least because of the overwhelming popularity of mind body explanations. Well, yes. But to change minds that are already firmly made up, I think we need a stronger result. It's no good saying "that's not good...

It has been tried before, without success The BPS advantage is that most scientists, doctors (and people) instinctively accept the BPS view, the mind can be responsible for anything we can't explain (kind of like witchcraft in medieval times). Because BPS has, at least, been clear that what...