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The above reminded me of the following bit of the interview with SW on The Life Scientific: Source: https://www.meassociation.org.uk/2017/02/transcript-of-jim-al-khalilis-interview-with-professor-sir-simon-wessely-the-life-scientific-bbc-radio-4-13-february-2017/ As I’ve written before, it’s...

If the original testing which identified damaging IDO2 mutations as a potentially predisposing factor was only done on the 20 severely affected patients, I assume that the remaining 46 samples were tested after the IDO2 hypothesis was generated. Does this not mean that, from a statistical point...

BBC Radio 4 Today programme had an interview with a patient who has been diagnosed with Lyme disease (2h, 37m, 20s): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0007bvr According to the patient she had been unwell for 4.5 years before she was diagnosed with Lyme by a German doctor using tests which are...

Thanks for posting this Tom. Very important issue. I wonder if some of the larger research charities (eg OMF) could set up specific affiliate programmes to make it easier for overseas ME organisations to raise funds for them in their own currency (which enables charities in some countries to...

I must say, I found this rather refreshing to read in the paper. Having become so tired of people trying to convince us that completely implausible and unhelpful ideas about ME/CFS are true, the suggestion that the theory has a low probability of being right actually increased my confidence in...

What an apparently devious and deceitful survey – in keeping with everything we’ve come to expect from the PACE authors and their supporters. It would be interesting to know where/how it is being promoted. I hope that the charities will bring this survey to the attention of their members and...

As far as I’m aware there are no papers published on @RDP ’s metabolic trap theory yet, but your summary is consistent with my understanding of what has been said. (Although I note that Dr Phair has said that he did not apply a Bonferroni correction when analysing the data.) I would be very...

Many thanks for taking the time to answer my questions @RDP. Very helpful, although it will take me some time to digest your responses. In the meantime, one more thing that puzzles me is this: @Chris Ponting (or @Simon M) can you confirm whether or not a GWAS would be capable of revealing the...

I’ve been very slow to catch up with this thread but I have some questions for @RDP or anyone else who might be able to answer. My understanding is that the Metabolic Trap Theory predicts a stable (rather than progressive) illness state, which appears to be consistent with most (but not all)...

Echoing my comment on the the other thread (about being fed up with annoying acronyms like MEGA, PACE etc.) and taking @Simon M ‘s comments into consideration (about the need to make it clearer to more people what it’s about) I would suggest something like The ME/CFS Genome Study. Or perhaps The...

Thanks for taking the time to reply, Chris – and for all your work on this. Can you shed any light on whether/how GWAS could help if it transpired that ME was caused by a pathogen, as I asked above? My limited understanding is that it would help if ME was triggered by a pathogen in genetically...

I do not wish to be too harsh on Baroness Blackwood, but I was disappointed that she saw fit to sign this (standardised) letter from the DHSC. I'm not sure there is anything to be gained by criticising the Baroness on social media but I am hopeful that people like Charles, Margaret Mar, Carol...

What do you think you/we could do that we are not already doing to try to attract more of the right sort of brains to take an interest in trying to crack this problem? Clearly all the ongoing efforts to expose the BPS falsehoods are helping, as are efforts to try to improve the accuracy and...

I’ve not managed to read this in detail or keep up with everything but does the suggestion that PEM is associated with hypermetabolism contradict Naviaux’s theory that ME/CFS may be associated with a hypometabolic state? (https://www.pnas.org/content/113/37/E5472) Where are we at with Naviaux’s...

Thanks again for answering all these questions, Simon. This is very interesting and not something I had appreciated or understand. If GWAS had been available before the discovery of, say, HIV, how would GWAS have helped to identify it? My understanding is that, with a tiny number of exceptions...

Presumably another possibility would be that ME/CFS is one illness with a common causal pathway but that there are no significant predisposing genetic factors – ie some type of as yet unidentified pathogen. (Or that this may be the case for a subgroup.) Whatever the truth, it would seem that the...

Many thanks for another excellent article @Simon M. I’m not well enough to read all the replies at the moment so apologies is this point has already been made. My only concern about the proposed study (which is the same point I made in response to MEGA) is about the number of samples that would...

In response to Jeff, Jen and Mattie, I echo what others have said. We must not conflate scepticism about the science with hostility towards individuals. Neither must we conflate scepticism about the science with scepticism about individuals’ experiences. I am puzzled by the science but I do not...

That is the sort of improbable scenario I was trying to imagine in this post: To me, it seems possible that anything which is capable of aggravating symptoms is also capable or perpetuating them. However, if the improbable scenario Jonathan considers above were true, the question would still...