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Noticed that the data of these NHIS surveys is open-access and available here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhis/data-questionnaires-documentation.htm Had a quick look at the most recent data from 2023 (more recent than the Unger paper posted here). Summary 2023 NHIS survey 29522 adults...

The 14 projects funded by the ZonMw Long Covid program in the Netherlands has been published. It looks quite impressive. The total budget has been increased from 6 to 11.4 miljoen euros. https://www.zonmw.nl/nl/nieuws/honorering-van-projecten-biomedische-en-klinische-rondes-post-covid

Thanks!

Wrote a quick summary of FITNET-NHS on our blog: https://mecfsskeptic.com/fitnet-nhs-a-summary/

On page 41, the document itself says 61 treatment withdrawals for FITNET compared to 12 for AM. Not sure what the difference with the flow chart comes from.

These look like the main results. The Clinical Global Improvement Score and quality of life (EQ-5D-Y) are not shown but also showed no significant differences. The only results that point to a consistent effect is (self-reported) school attendance which was about 12% higher in the FITNET group.

Another remarkable figure that does not receive a lot of attention in the abstract: the percentage of patients completing 80% or more of expected modules/sessions was 78% in the Activity Management control group but only 37.4% of the intervention group.

They define the control treatment as if it was similar to pacing: But it seems more like graded exercise therapy (GET):

Haven't read the report yet but the research team of Crawley defined the minimal clinically important difference for this scale to be 10 points. So that would suggest that the effect they found was too small to be clinically significant. It also seems that it decreased to 4.4 points at the 12...

Traditional Neuropsychological Tests The following two traditional neuropsychological tests were used and took about 10 minutes to be completed. Test of Premorbid Functioning (TOPF (Pearson, 2009): The TOPF requires participants to read a list of 70 phonetically irregular words. The ability to...

A description of the tasks is available in the supplementary material. Except for the maze (GML) they seem rather easy tasks focusing on detection and memory. CogState Brief Screening Battery (CBSB) Detection Task (DET): Task stimuli are images of playing cards showing either red or black...

So accuracy showed no difference but performance speed does. Exercise had no further impact on cognitive functioning. Here's quote from the discussion section that summarizes the findings:

Seems like you're right. When looking into this, I tried to calculate the minimum effect size d (mean_difference/sd_baseline) that could be statistically significant (p = 0.05) given the sample size n = 15. To get an easy approximation, I assumed sd_baseline = sd_post = 1 and the sd of the...

VO2_peak (19.43 on day 1 versus 19.67 on day 2) and workload_peak (36 on day 1 versus 36 on day 2) did not change at all. At the gas exchange threshold (GET), VO2 declined from 1.09 to 1.06 (in absolute numbers) corresponding to a cohen's d of 0.318. Workload at GET does not seem to be reported.

The sample size (n = 15) was probably too low.

The cumulative DALY impact for fatigue seems rather low compared to other outcomes:

Interesting. I was curious to know how it worked so had a look at the code: https://github.com/kosukeimai/MatchIt/blob/master/R/matchit.R It's a far too complex for me but if I understand the gist of it, the default is to use logistic regression, calculate predicted values and then find the...

This looks like a very successful grant round at the university of Vienna: The WWT and WE&ME Foundation provided funding for a call on Understanding ME/CFS of maximal 100.000 euros in funding per project. They received 13 applications and 7 were funded. These include research on severe ME...

The conclusion of the paper writes: Which I found rather confusing because the content of their paper suggest rather the opposite. Of 30 single nucleotide variants (SNVs) previously associated with CFS, only one was associated with subjective fatigue severity in the control group. The authors...

Quote from the review: In the discussion section the reviewers refer to ME/CFS: