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  1. Simon M

    United Kingdom: Action for ME (AfME) news

    worth bearing in mind that Action for ME is a partner in the DecodeME study its chief executive, Sonya Chowdhury, is chair of the study's management committee and played a huge part in making the study come about, as well as in setting it up. I don't think there is any need to worry about a...
  2. Simon M

    COVID-19 Survivors' Reports of the Timing, Duration, and Health Impacts of Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (PASC) Infection, 2021, Lambert et al

    Very interesting difference in sex ratio between hospitalised and non-hospitalised cases: — hospitalised: 41% women. — Non-hospitalised: 86% women. These were different studies, so it's not a direct comparison. But the results aren't that surprising, since men are more likely to have severe...
  3. Simon M

    Participation bias

    Split from The course of the illness for ME patients in Norway, 2021, Schei and Angelsen The potential effect of sample biases on DecodeME Summary: there is some evidence that this could be a problem, but is not clear how big a problem and it may be possible to adjust for possible biases...
  4. Simon M

    The course of the illness for ME patients in Norway, 2021, Schei and Angelsen

    looking at the graph, it's 2015 before we could be confident there is a decline, rather than simply a plateau, and the survey was done in 2019. The decline could be both a delay in getting diagnosis and also taking a while to get interested in research: that's way above my pay grade :). But...
  5. Simon M

    Clinical and epidemiological data of COVID-19 from Regensburg, Germany: a retrospective analysis of 1084 consecutive cases, 2021, Lampl et al

    Long covid estimate of 9% max assuming I have understood the method right, this was a fairly comprehensive and unbiased original sample. Which means this could be giving us a decent estimate of the rates of long Covid; this implies a rate of only 9% at six weeks, which is lower than quite a few...
  6. Simon M

    The course of the illness for ME patients in Norway, 2021, Schei and Angelsen

    Thanks to everyone who contributed to the discussion. This is my attempt to summarise the main points about possible explanations for the surprising graph shape. Possible explanations related to the illness itself. 1. A slow steady rate of recovery, so that over time, fewer and fewer people...
  7. Simon M

    The course of the illness for ME patients in Norway, 2021, Schei and Angelsen

    I can think of a number of possible explanations as to why the study finds a steady increase in the onset of ME/CFS, since the mid-80s to around 2015. But I am keen to hear others. My starting point is that I expected to see a fairly flat graph. Apart from any epidemics that produced the spike...
  8. Simon M

    The course of the illness for ME patients in Norway, 2021, Schei and Angelsen

    The remarkable onset graph - thoughts? The report includes a graph showing year of onset for 5800 people. This is a very large sample and the first big study I have seen that measures year of onset, as opposed to the much-less-useful year of diagnosis. The most striking feature of the graph...
  9. Simon M

    Clinical Characteristics, Activity Levels and Mental Health Problems in Children with Long COVID: A Survey of 510 Children, 2021, Buonsenso et al

    This study might yet be consistent with ME/CFS. The average age in the study was 10.3 years. And a couple of studies for ME have shown that the gender map imbalance emerges at puberty. It would be interesting to see data for the gender ratio pre-/post-puberty. Separately, this study found that...
  10. Simon M

    UK spends £18.5m on 4 long covid studies

    ME/CFS what I love to see is this applied to ME/CFS research. The obvious thing would be a cohort of glandular fever patients. I think there are 5 to 10,000 cases a year, at least, and they are fairly easy to identify because they all get tested. Over a couple of years you could probably recruit...
  11. Simon M

    UK spends £18.5m on 4 long covid studies

    £18.5 million awarded to new research projects to understand and treat long COVID The NIHR and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI - the MRC is included in this) have funded four new research studies to better understand and address the longer-term effects of COVID-19 on physical and mental...
  12. Simon M

    Effects of Post-Exertional Malaise on Markers of Arterial Stiffness in Individuals with ME/CFS, Bond et al, 2021

    given that the study made 24 comparisons and didn't seem to make any adjustments for multiple comparisons, the single "significant" P value of 0.03 would suggest that there is no effect here.
  13. Simon M

    British Medical Association article: Long Covid - we've been here before, 2021, J. Trueland

    my memory is rubbish, but weren't F and M looking at something like this at some point - or some researchers. Sorry to be so vague! I thought nitric oxide might be involved, as a vasodilator. It also ties in with the micro capillary work being done by the Open Medicine Foundation (though this...
  14. Simon M

    A Molecular network approach reveals shared cellular and molecular signatures between CFS and other fatiguing illnesses, 2021, Comella et al

    Tiny study: To provide some insight into the molecular processes that underlie CFS, we carried out a study on 15 patients diagnosed with CFS and 15 age, sex, and BMI matched controls (Supplemental Table-2). CFS was formally diagnosed using the Fukuda Criteria (Supplemental Table-4)[19]...
  15. Simon M

    The difficulties of conducting intervention trials for the treatment of [ME/CFS]: Expert testimony to NICE guidelines committee by Jonathan Edwards

    Allow me to speculate. Presumably, NICE undertook some kind of evidence review in 2007 and found the evidence (pre-PACE, even lower quality) for CBT and GET to be acceptable. Whatever system was used in 2007, in 2020 NICE used the GRADE system. Interestingly, Cochrane had used exactly the...
  16. Simon M

    The difficulties of conducting intervention trials for the treatment of [ME/CFS]: Expert testimony to NICE guidelines committee by Jonathan Edwards

    Trying again: The expert testimony to NICE that took apart the case for CBT Professor Jonathan Edwards told NICE it should not recommend eitehr CBT or graded exercise as all the trial evidence for them used subjective outcomes in unblinded trials, giving unreliable results. He showed why...
  17. Simon M

    Risks for Developing ME/CFS in College Students Following Infectious Mononucleosis: A Prospective Cohort Study, 2020, Jason et al

    Iniital thoughts Hats off to Lenny Jason and colleagues for pulling off and a huge and significant study. This is the first truly prospective study of post-infectious ME/CFS. The importance of prospective studies is that measuring what happens before the illness starts allows researchers to...
  18. Simon M

    BMJ editorial: Updated NICE Guideline on chronic fatigue syndrome, 2020, Stokes and Wade

    Other gems: Second, just because you believe that you cannot meet a high theoretical standard does not entitle you to demand that you be judged against a lower one. The fact that your research falls short does not make the theoretical standard less important. Nor does it magically infuse your...
  19. Simon M

    BMJ editorial: Updated NICE Guideline on chronic fatigue syndrome, 2020, Stokes and Wade

    Merged thread Re: Updated NICE guidance on chronic fatigue syndrome (Hughes, Tuller, Racaniello) Apologies if this brillaint rapid response to the BMJ editorial by Profs Wade and Turner-Stokes has been posted already: https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4774/rr-4 Rapid response: Re: Updated...
  20. Simon M

    Science for ME submission to the NICE draft ME/CFS guideline consultation, December 2020, and submission on substantive errors, August 2021

    I've only read the summary so far but this looks like fantastic work, raising important points and arguing for them eloquently. It must've been an extraordinary amount of work and I greatly appreciate it. Is there a document of the submission that I can print out? I struggle to read much on a...
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