Search results

Yes there were also reports of chronotropic intolerance in exercise tests of ME/CFS but those seem to disappear when controls were matched for fitness. So I wonder if the results in this paper may simply be due to deconditioning/the ME/CFS patients being less fit than the controls.

Looks like a decent study and analysis to me. The Twitter thread is quite useful for understanding the paper.

But unfortunate that they did not report the prevalence rate of ME/CFS. They only note that "Among infected participants meeting criteria for ME/CFS, 98%met the criteria for PASC." More interesting would be to know which % of PASC patients meets ME/CFS criteria. I assume they have this...

Do you have any views on the repetitive pattern in the standard errors of the results? https://www.s4me.info/threads/efficacy-of-cognitive-behavioral-therapy-targeting-severe-fatigue-following-covid-19-results-of-a-randomized-controlled-trial-2023-kuut-knoop-et-al.33229/page-6#post-475729

Looks like they only included 5 ME/CFS patients and that they found no evidence of increased IgG reactivity to stool bacteria compared to controls. The abstract could have been clearer about this.

This seems to be the main idea: "Recently, autoantibodies to the selenium transporter SELENOP (SELENOP-aAb) have been identified in Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and shown to impair selenium transport and selenoprotein expression. [...] we tested the hypothesis that SELENOP-aAb are prevalent in...

" AUC, sensitivity, specifcity, and accuracy were reported in only some of the studies (n=35, 34.65%). Due to the limited number of studies that included these values, an average was not calculated."

Think it was this one: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20047707/

"This year two Grants valued up to $25,000 are available, and four $5,000 Scholarships." So that makes $70,000 per year? Not bad for a New Zealand which has around 5 million inhabitants.

There have been quite a lot of improvements in the ME/CFS situation in Germany. There are now investment in research, the IQWiG report, political discussions on ME/CFS etc. I realise these are all still inadequate and that the situation for ME/CFS patients in Germany remains dire. But the pace...

Quote from the paper: "Uplifts can be a focus of behavioral management [12] if the clinician collaboratively identifies with the patient pleasant, enjoyable, low-effort activities that are often lacking in the lives of individuals with debilitating CFS [31, 32]. This may have relevance to CFS...

Yes the means post-treatment are estimated means and accounting for the correlation of multiple measurements by the same person ('repeated measurements were nested within participants') might have reduced variability. But in my view it would not explain why the SE are the same for 9 out of 10...

The pooled standard deviation is just for estimating the effect size, the Cohen's D. I'm far from an expert myself but really think these are errors.

Yes sounds like a good summary, thanks.

Perhaps you should write to the journal editors or ask the help of data sleuths such as Nick Brown or Health Nerd on Twitter.

How was this not picked up by peer review (or people tweeting enthusiastically about the study)...

Yes this can't be right. Must be an error of some kind. It also doesn't make sense to report the standard error (SE) instead of the standard deviation (SD) for the values at baseline. Because we know that the sample size n for each group was 57, we can calculate the SD as SE times the square...

Van Gaal, the Dutch football trainer said during the world cup that he believed that "we can come an end". Another favourite that is frequently used in Flemish jokes is: "Make that the cat wise". It is a literal translation of tell that to the cat, meaning I don't believe you, you're not...

Thanks, changed it. A lot of my English grammar or spelling mistakes are the result of translating a Dutch word a bit too literally. Same with 'dead angle' which comes from 'dode hoek', the space in traffic that truck drivers have hard time seeing.