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Commentary: a (fruitless) search for biopsychosocial gold? In a nutshell: this appears to be an unsuccessful attempt to find biopsychosocial gold by looking to see if neuropeptide Y (which has links to anxiety and stress) is linked to developing CFS after an infection. There is no link, and...

I agree. My understanding is that the reason for most research studies requiring the 50% reduction in function is to give greater certainty of diagnosis. As you say, it might be valuable to study milder cases that won't have the confounding factors associated with long-term chronic illness...

I think this is important work. There are many small studies out there - what we need is to see the big picture. Key findings in test-retest: 21w (95%CI −38 to −4, tau = 9.8) pooled mean decrease in work rate at the anaerobic threshold (four studies). 8.5W (95% CI −15.38 to –1.72) pooled mean...

Thanks to everyone who has replied here or messaged me privately. The feedback and suggestions have been very helpful in deciding what to do next.

On the one hand, this makes sense. There are specialist journals for many illnesses. On the other hand, I wasn't aware there was a problem getting good quality ME papers published. There is also Fatigue: Biomedicine, Health and Behaviour, which is ME-friendly and has people like Lenny Jason and...

It's a very interesting piece. "Yet here’s the kicker: hopelessness is a privilege. If my condition was just a bit more severe, my life would be miserable. If I wasn’t married and didn’t have a supportive family, I would be in penury. If I hadn’t chosen a career path that has some flexibility...

Hi I thinking about seeing an ME/CFS consultant privately these two names came up. Has anyone tried them and if so, can they tell me anything about them? Or any other suggestions (and why?) I can't travel so would need to be by video. Thanks.

My blog on the HLA research: https://mecfsresearchreview.me/2020/04/23/the-best-evidence-yet-that-immune-system-problems-can-cause-me-cfs/ (sorry, don't have the capacity to follow this thread properly but post in case this is relevant.)

Thanks for all your comments and analysis. Compared with prevalence studies, DecodeME requires PEM, as you say, and also requires all participants to have a diagnosis of ME or CFS from a healthcare professional. Clinically diagnosing each case ourselves would have been ideal but would also...

Devereux-Cooke et al., 2022 :)

I think so - if there is a pathway that gets out of balance in ME (the hypothesis), you would expect to see sDNA differences in genes involved in the pathway or in its regulation. From my dodgy memory banks, a quick summary of the NMR vs metabolomics approaches Like all 'omics, metabolomics is...

Very good to hear there are more studies in the pipeline. Am I right in thinking that other metabolomics studies (Lipkin, Hansen, maybe Unutmaz, Naviaux) didn't find increased use of glutamine/ate? Though I note this:

No it is shipped My poor phrasing: I simply meant that the original claim that we rely more on amino acids is not robust and hasn't been independently replicated (and there have been many metabolomics studies).

thanks for the clarification on the genetic stuff. But my concern is more fundamental than that. Such hypothesis work is inevitably speculative. By building on sand, the whole process looks like a waste of time to me. The hypothesis is based on the idea that we burn more amino acids for energy...

Where is the evidence that we are reliant on amino acids for energy? I wasn't aware that was a solid finding. Again, we have no good evidence (yet) of any genetic differences in ME/CFS. I'm worried about pursuing hypotheses based on shaky foundations. Let's get the core science right first...

70 people a week = 3500 people a year registering. Good to see this project is gaining scale. It also shows the scale of what Decode ME is attempting: we want to recruit 25,000 people in short order. We have plans and a big community of people who are enthusiastic about this. But we’re going...

Yet another published poem from Veronica, this time connecting themes of chronic illness and war with her Ukrainian heritage. I think the imagery of the fiery sentinels that vanish is so powerful. It's worth reading the full poem at Star 82 Review...

The study only has 22 patients and researchers had to combine several different factors to create a "biomarker" with reasonable results. It seems likely that they searched through many more features to get this result. Above all, there was no replication. We need researchers to raise their game...

OK, they found nothing and went rummaging through the data looking for an interesting finding: So by selecting two antigens in combination with age and gender they found not very impressive sensitivity and specificity. No doubt they explored many different combinations of antigens and patient...

Lupus analogy is helpful in understanding the value SNP findings in GWAS This analogy from Jonathan Edwards, about how a deficiency of one protein in the complement system revealed the importance of the complement system as a whole in causing Lupus, is very helpful in understanding how GWAS...