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The white cells in this case would be neutrophils. Having low B cells is not considered dangerous - nobody even bothers to measure them normally and you can manage without them for five years at least (we discovered). Neutrophils carry no individual memory so getting rid of them and getting new...

I am not very optimistic it would help. Hyponatremia in ill people probably involves a secondary hypothalamic/endocrine shift that can be activated by a whole range of signals including cytokines and other things. I think if problems in severe ME involved known cytokine pathways someone would...

Presumably a see-through mask.

So the trial was not double blind. Pretty much a waste of time.

I wonder what the 'placebo' was. BCG gives you a nice red bump to tell you that you had the real stuff. Not many dummies do that. A 'placebo' has to be credible mimic to be any use. And having a crossover interaction paradoxically causing hair loss all seems a wee bit lie cherry picking.

I don't think they research them so much as use them as leverage for income. Research requires rigour and common sense. I have spent my life researching inflammatory disease and these panels are, as far as I am concerned, unable to tell us anything useful. When cytokines matter you see their...

This is marketing rather than science, @Sasha. Any grown up scientist has known since student days that 'cell types' are just convenient rough groupings. Every cell is different in one way or another. Every brain cell has a different structure and function. People write this sort of stuff to...

I have yet to see anything that suggests that this is serious science. There is no coherent background hypothesis as far as I know and no meaningful trials to date. That leaves us with something of the status of some arbitrary nineteenth century magical cure. If I remember rightly cryotherapy -...

None of these things mean much in clinical practice. They are done by fringe physicians who over-interpret them as a rule. I see no reason to think anyone with ME/CFS has had a cytokine storm. we are talking the difference between a gentle breeze of a few slightly high cytokines in some people...

Only had a quick look but I thin it pretty certain that the trial tells us nothing other than nothing probably works much, otherwise the results would have differed for different arms. I am surprised that NICE endorses off label usage here. Presumably the committee was composed of believers...

It isn't even an editorial. Editorial is often used to voice a point of view on behalf of a publication. It is not a place for an officer to voice a personal opinion.

Ah, so it goes on to reveal the mind-blowing lack of insight behind the editorial in more detail. Riley seems to think he is somehow a provider of benevolence. The actual benevolence comes from members pockets and recently has been squandered (at least on one project). The whole tone comes...

I don't think that is good enough from a trustee of a medical charity. 'Opinion pieces' based on personal anecdote in an area plagued by such anecdotes and desperately needing some considered thought are unacceptable and it is time that was understood.

I will respond to both Nigel and Partinen when I get home. I am not sure the Partinen is worth the effort but I might as well point out that he has missed the point of my article (or several of the points).

I am just dipping in to the forum while travelling. I am not up to signing a petition although the does not mean that Iw Ould not have done under other circumstances. I have read the editorial by Neil Riley. All I can says that it comes across as shockingly ill-informed and ill-considered. He...

Thanks for the heads up. I am currently in an Ecolodge in Peru with WIFI driven by a watermill. I hope to make some responses in the not too distant future but not tonight!

They are as likely as anything to. Heavy metals were traditional in early medicine. Gold was almost insoluble but could be dissolved using sulfhydryl containing organic acids like thiomalate (a bit like the EDTA used for limescale). Gold sodium thiomalate (GSTM) was tried for consumption (TB)...

Yes, highly plausible. If the process is perpetuated by signals in a re-entrant loop and one arm of that loop gets blocked efficiently enough the process could switch off completely. This happens rather rarely in most autoimmune diseases although there are some where it is quite common (e.g...

There isn't really anything to say. It is just pseudo medical make believe. A bit like saying that cod liver oil is good for lubricating your joints - about as plausible as watering plastic flowers making them grow.

I think there is a problem with physicians who have an interest in this sort of thing in that what they see in clinics may be very skewed by referral patterns. There is also the problem with Covid that since almost everyone has had it, it is hard to know whether or not it has anything to do with...