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I think the comments above address most of my thoughts on the subject. Ideally this paper will open funding to test on other conditions; in a perfect world this would include mild/moderate ME/CFS patients, autoimmune conditions, POTS, fibromyalgia, plus anxiety and depression disorders - and...

Placebo response not sustained upon removal of placebo. Shocked, shocked, I tell you.

Agree with all of that, though I am more cautious around the Cyclophosphamide trial: we see a massive placebo response* in the Rituximab Phase 3 trial and I cannot see how one achieves decent blinding in a drug as grim as Cyclo. *Not massively surprising - take a patient community that is given...

Personally I consider the first of those adjectives to be very different from the second and third (which I totally 100% support). The trouble is, whilst I think the ME/CFS community absolutely has the right to be angry, that is not the same as it being tactically effective.

https://retractionwatch.com/2019/04/17/plos-one-pulls-highly-cited-mindfulness-paper-over-undeclared-ties-other-concerns/ Chalk another one up for James Coyne. I'm in two minds about Professor Coyne: his abrasive approach is quite often detrimental, in my view, especially for a patient...

True, which is why I am very circumspect about what I call my health problems at work. That said, I do recognise a gender bias however: I still remember a (woman) GP telling me "no, you're genuinely ill, not like those women who just refuse to get out of bed".

It looks to me a lot like the approach being taken by Lenny Jason here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5510613/

There's some interesting data here. They've effectively done a linear regression analysis for a huge number of variables against fatigue as the dependent variable (dependent in a mathematical sense, though as it appears in a journal on psychosomatic research it's probably fair to assume the...

I politely won't be signing that. IMHO, there is no proof that 'ME is not CFS', other that the tautological approach of saying there is some kind of 'true ME' and defining CFS as 'people diagnosed with ME/CFS who don't have ME'. If we (rightly) criticise the scientific approach, methods and...

I think hardship may change gene expression but I don't think it changes overall genetics - i.e. the actual genes of the following generation, which is what is being tested in this study. Overall, I think a) the study is pretty uncontroversial; it would be a surprise if socioeconomic status...

Only got around to reading the rest of this week's issue last night - worth noting there's an accompanying editorial: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24232243-200-its-time-to-change-our-approach-to-psychosomatic-illness/

It's a pretty fascinating topic and I don't find the result particularly surprising: certain genes having a weak link to intelligence which itself has a weak link with socio-economic position. The trouble with this area is that everybody has their own axe to grind - in particular those who like...

Combining this with the recent prospective studies showing, for glandular fever/mono for example, that initial illness severity is the best predictor for later physical functioning... perhaps that might indicate that initial psychological factors aren't particularly relevant? The...

No, (I'm an NS subscriber) general focus is on non-epileptic attacks and inexplicable paralysis. On the latter, the 'distraction technique' is interesting but if you read that across to ME/CFS it'd explain why you'd believe something as ridiculous as the LP might work - 'repeating "I'm strong...

Similarly, if ME/CFS were perpetuated by 'unhelpful beliefs' we would expect the success rate of CBT/GET to be so much higher. When it comes to other phobias, a quick google search suggests CBT practitioners claim success rates of 60% to 90%. And that makes sense: demonstrate that belief is...

'Could' is doing so much work in this sentence it's probably a breach of EU labour law.

I'm saying literally neither of those things.

That's genuinely not true. My OH has worked for various cancer charities, lung charities, a heart charity, asthma etc. etc. All do basic research funding for initial studies that are too small and too speculative to get public funding. The charities' roles in most conditions is to fund...

This this this. My OH often has medical charities as clients and it is impossible to overestimate how important charities' and other private donors' roles are in pump-priming research. Organisations like the NIH or MRC will generally only step in once a charity-funded pilot study has shown...

Initial thoughts: N=22, Canadian criteria 9 had Lyme diagnoses but were found to be clear prior to any antibiotic treatment - however no differences in results were found between the 'Lyme' and non-'Lyme' groups in the ME/CFS cohort p-values were nice and low, not clear (on my skim) about...