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That was interesting. I think there has been a lot of speculation about HRV's relationship with vagal activity. This trial should be a nail in the coffins of the ideas that meditation or diaphragmatic breathing help fibromyalgia. Good on the authors for devising a reasonable trial and for...

This looks like a decent study - two treatments (vagus nerve stimulation and meditative breathing) each with a fairly reasonable sham version. So: None of the treatments changed heart rate variability None of the treatments performed better than the others with respect to pain Changes in heart...

I'm not sure why Ron is making it sound as though a microfluidic device to assess neutrophil movement is a new thing, or why it needs to be developed. For instance, there was this 2013 paper: Measuring neutrophil speed and directionality during chemotaxis, directly from a droplet of whole blood...

From what I can see, they are totally separate studies. Unfortunately Michael doesn't seem to be sharing exactly what they will be looking for, he says on twitter that he has learned to not openly share as much as he used to. He does say that some of the members of the team previously produced...

We need an ME/CFS brain bank.

In the absence of any information at all, it's hard to be sure, but perhaps it is time for all of the people in the review writing group and on the IAG who want a scientifically based outcome to resign. The delay in any public progress is beyond reason and morality, as others have said...

Nov 2022 New York Magazine Article Biased and Riddled with Errors Today I sent the following email to the Editor of New York Magazine: As a reader of New York Magazine, I have come to expect your articles to be accurate, well-researched, and fair. Unfortunately your recent piece, “Has Long...

We also have evidence of his leaning to 'mind-body rubbish' prior to developing Long Covid. So perhaps we should see his sudden understanding that Long Covid could not be cured by positive thinking and exercise as the aberration in his thinking. When he began to naturally recover, he could...

It's not clear from the article or the abstract how many, if any, of the study participants had Long Covid. If it's a general post-Covid effect that doesn't correlate with Long Covid symptoms, it might still be a clue, but there's a need to explain what is different about people with Long...

Yes, that was one good thing, the study is evidence that CBT doesn't help fibromyalgia. But of course, in the BPS world, that just means more funding is needed to tweak the CBT offering to make it more suitable and/or study the application of some other psychological treatment with a...

Age, CP calcium volume and cortical BPnd were correlated. Sex and the disease/control groups were not. So, none of the disease groups had more CP calcification or cortical BPnd than might have been expected for the ages of the groups. They conclude that CP calcium volume is an easy way to...

The 2022 study quantifies the amount of calcification in the CP and the size of the CP and compares them to "cortical BPnd" which is a measure of the concentration of translator protein (TSPO). They say TSPO is expressed by activated microglia - and so I think activated microglia is assumed to...

Regarding the calcification, this image might help with understanding where the calcification occurs. Clinical Imaging of Choroid Plexus in Health and in Brain Disorders: A Mini-Review, 2019 At the bottom of the image is a capillary with red blood. At the top is the blue CSF, and then the...

Just in the meantime, some background on the choroid plexus, which forms the blood-CSF barrier: From Development and functions of the choroid plexus–cerebrospinal fluid system, Nature 2015 The choroid plexus (ChP) is a secretory tissue found in each of the brain ventricles, the main function of...

I'm gobsmacked. The researchers used completely different methods to measure pain for the chronic pain and the fibromyalgia groups. They did this because the hospital's rheumatologists asked them to. So, there's no way to compare the level of pain in each group or the change in pain after the...

I did a 2xCPET as part of a study, but with a 48 hour gap, not 24 hours. I did the first CPET, and then had PEM for several/more? hours that night. When I say PEM, I mean, feeling terrible, like I had a bad flu, with a feeling of my body being crushed, glands up, absolutely had to lie down...

Abstract Introduction: Little is known about risk factors for both Long COVID and somatic symptoms that develop in individuals without a history of COVID-19 in response to the pandemic. There is reason to assume an interplay between pathophysiological mechanisms and psychosocial factors in the...

I'm sure that you are. My view is that the physicians are stumbling around in the dark in much the same way as those of us who assume we have ME/CFS. In terms of convincing yourself, I found tracking my symptoms for a while so that I understood them better was helpful. And hearing about the...

The 2xCPET won't give you objective proof that you aren't "crazy". Or even proof that you have ME/CFS. It won't prove that you do or do not have PEM. If your 2xCPET is abnormal, you won't know for sure that you have ME/CFS. If it's normal, you won't know for sure that you don't have ME/CFS...

What transparency of analysis? The authors took the one or two hour interviews of 13 young women and then chatted about them amongst themselves, applying their prejudices and beliefs to what they had heard as they did so. They then concocted two narratives which illustrated the ideas they felt...