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What is his contribution exactly?

Posted a summary thread about this article here: https://bsky.app/profile/mecfsskeptic.bsky.social/post/3lhvwpusjjh2c

It also writes: So they aim to find an effect of 1.5/2.2 = 0.68 standard deviations. That seems unrealistically large.

Here's how they describe the intervention. It looks like pacing but in rehabilitation and CBT-context. I doubt it will be successful. IMHO pacing is more a way of coping than an effective intervention.

Seems to be very little explanation of what the drug is.

So changing one data point makes the result statistically insignificant? Whatever the right version of the dataset, it's clear that these results aren't very robust.

Agree it looks like more than one dot to me. I suspect it's easier to make a mistake in the text and p-value calculation than plot a wrong data point like this. So I wonder if the plot might be the correct version.

These seem to be the main results for EBV. Notable that the seniors had similarly elevated viral load. So perhaps it was mostly the control group that was unusual?

Perhaps a stupid question but isn't it more likely that menstruation caused symptoms in addition to ME/CFS symptoms, rather than exacerbating those? In that case it wouldn't not tell use more about ME/CFS pathology.

Instead of skin biopsies, they used a non-invasive method that looks at the nerves in the eye (in vivo corneal confocal microscopy). They found evidenced of impaired heat detection and increased tortuosity of small fibers. But in contrast to previous studies, no differences in small fiber...

it seems that the intervention was something that was made up, together with people living with Long Covid. Not sure why this idea would warrant a trial of more than 500 people...

This is from the discussion section of the paper:

Meerpohl is also a member of the Governing Board so he might have been involved in the decision to cancel the planned update. https://community.cochrane.org/organizational-info/people/governing-board/governing-board-membership

This rapid response criticises the NICE guideline by referring to the Cochrane review on GET as a good example of applying GRADE:

Just noticed that Joerg Meerpohl the director of Cochrane Germany who commented on the review in the German article was also a co-author of this rapid response with Paul Garner that accused NICE of a "disastrous misapplication of GRADE methodology."...

I thought the point of not wanting to retract Cochrane reviews was to keep reviewers happy and not offend them (so that researchers keep doing reviews for Cochrane). But what they have done now with the IAG and new author team is arguably worse. They wasted their time and treated them with...

Reflecting a bit more on the useful German article. Not sure if this reason given by Cochrane makes sense. If they wanted to avoid controversy, they would not have offended Hilda - one of their founders with a large influence. Avoiding controversy would probably mean to take the middle...

Good that other people at Cochrane are interviewed about this. Perhaps that is something advocates can do: contact regional Cochrane offices or the people involved, piont to the problems with the ME/CFS review and ask if they could help?

Not sure, it's common to split evidence for adults versus children.

Not so sure because their concept of ME/CFS might differ and be more inclusive than ours. I've heard some interesting stories from ME/CFS patients in Belgium. In the early 2000s that country financed CFS centres where patients were treated with GET/CBT. You had to meet CFS criteria (Fukuda) in...