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Don't be silly... having a proper control group might lead to a null result. It would be so easy to have a control group (instead of 'seeing a doctor or nurse who specialises in psychological problems in the medically ill', the control group would have a cup of tea and a natter with just a...

Oh dear, I thought I'd look at where this is coming from and have fallen down the FND rabbit hole. The write up relating to CFS which states... ...would seem to indicate that the study will be looking at inflammation or neuroimmune factors*. But the PI seems to mainly be interested in using...

A few initial, unfocussed thoughts: It's an interesting hypothesis. Overall I'm sceptical, for reasons set out below, but it's worth noting one item that isn't driving said scepticism: it is true that were this to pan out, the BPS crew would almost certainly claim it as a vindication of their...

I had to fight exceedingly hard for a blood test for pernicious anaemia... GP didn't want 'to go on a fishing expedition' - despite the fact my grandfather had died from suspected complications from pernicious anaemia back in the fifties. Took quite a lot of arguing that it's not a fishing...

Derya Unutmaz has said on Twitter that he's going, which is a positive sign.

A close family member has this*, which came on after pregnancy. She went to the GP complaining of extreme fatigue and was told several times she was just tired because she had a new baby. Thankfully she's a registered nurse and isn't intimidated by doctors, so pushed hard for blood tests...

Yep, it's done under the 'Resilience' banner at my work, something that I've pushed back on for my team because it often comes across as 'please suffer in silence'. These fads come and go. First it was NLP, until that was shown by everybody (other than Bristol University) to be...

Not quite the same, but related: mindfulness seems to be highly in fashion in the corporate environment, for similar reasons. I've seen it be introduced by senior management in a way that basically says 'hey, we might have cut your team by 30% and doubled your workload, but we gave you all...

I took a quick look at the Breakspear website, saw the bit where they start banging on about mercury in vaccines, and then ran away.

The difficulty with, and one of the reasons I'm wary of, metabolomic (and microbiome) studies is that they're so wide-ranging that one is bound to get chance results. Plus there seems to be a wide intertemporal variation as well - it really depends on what time of day you take the samples, what...

Quite possibly. I just found it interesting because if (in isolation from any other flaws the trial might have) I had an objective measure that appears to show a statistically significant benefit, I wouldn't be squirreling that away.

Sounds promising, though of course we'll need to await the paper to see if the consistency is between specific metabolites or just between metabolic pathways. They seem fairly confident though as I don't think the OMF would put this out unless they thought it would be publishable shortly.

This study is a bit of a head scratcher for me. One of the main (highly legitimate) criticisms of these trials is the lack of objective measures. Yet here the authors appear to have a statistically significant result when using activity monitors but tend to downplay that in the text. I find...

Some bits I found interesting: CDF is based on parental report at 13yo, parental/child report at 16yo and at child report at 18yo and... That's a pretty gigantic red flag IMHO. Taking the stats above, very few of the CDF patients can be demonstrated to not have their fatigue caused by a...

From what I recall, a minority were disappointed the OMF didn't get funded. Personally (as I've posted here before) I'm really pleased the Unutmaz team got funded as I think it's really valuable to get a new team into the field. Not that rare though - my missus+family are on it due to epilepsy.

Just used my lunchbreak to plough through this... it's excellent. And just in time for submission to a NICE review!

It's a good letter. Though I'd be interested to hear more about: This would seem to suggest weight training or even HIIT would be acceptable for use in ME/CFS. Has anybody tried this? (I'd give it a go but cowardice requires me to see if anybody else wants to be guinea pig ;))

To be clear, I think the likelihood of ME/CFS being down to false illness belief as being basically zero: too much work has been done on this hypothesis, the trials that support it are all irredeemably flawed and where studies have tried to put in measures that would counteract placebo effect...

A million times this. Show me that CBT/GET works on a well-characterised group of ME/CFS patients with objective measures of long-term health benefits, low drop-out rates and decent evidence that it doesn't have risk of long-term exacerbation of symptoms, and I'll sign up tomorrow. I don't...

Fascinating article, and it was heartening to read the level of improvement reported in the three patients in question. It was surprising (it probably shouldn't have been) to me to realise that beyond typical numbness/pain/other neuropathy, pressure on the spinal cord in the neck could cause...