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I've asked around and it seems that most people have access to the full review and the protocol. I, however, don't have access. I can only see the abstract of both. For example if I go to the protocol (link: https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD003200/full) I only see...

Sorry to hear you're getting worse. I'm afraid I can't help much but my initial thought is that if a change in taste is a symptom of hypothyroidism perhaps that means this isn't being treated well enough.

Thanks @Dolphin! I was not seeing this. The pdf I've found stopped after 'Objectives'. It all makes a bit more sense now. Only a bit because the outcome measure do mention: "timed walking tests and tests of strength or aerobic capacity", "employment status", compliance with the intervention etc.

Now I'm confused. When I search for the protocol I get a very, very short text that does not mention the outcomes measures it is going to look at. Could you quote from whatever you are seeing, for example where outcomes measures are specified (perhaps Shub gave me another version or something...

Caution: This analysis was done by someone with no professional statistical training and is quite possibly wrong. Pooling the 6-minute walking test data - a preliminary attempt I did an attempt to pool the data from the 6-minute walking test in the PACE trial and Jason et al. 2007 in a...

7) Objective outcomes: an overview of what wasn’t reported I thought it might be useful to get an overview of the objective outcomes that were available in the trials that make up the Cochrane review. Mark Vink already gave a good summary in his 2018 analysis of the Cochrane review, but I would...

7) Objective outcomes: Where is the protocol? Larun et al. noted that the 8 randomized trials included in their review have a high performance bias and detection bias due to a lack of blinding. In such cases, objectives outcomes are considered more reliable. The largest study to date on bias in...

Thanks for your efforts Mario,

Could someone make a presentation of this data? For example mean and standard deviation for each outcome (steps, time pulse) at baseline, 20 weeks and 70 weeks? I'm not good at playing around with data. I can't even figure which patients are in which treatment group...

Thanks JemPD, you're on the list!

Thanks Nasim. You're on the list!

Just noticed that the trial by Fulcher & White, 1997 has two fatigue outcomes: the 44-point Chalder Fatigue Scale and a visual analogue scale. The Cochrane review only uses the first (they probably thought it was a good thing that they could use the same scale as other GET-trials). It might be...

I know, but Jo Nijs was also an author of that paper and has since proposed 'Activity Pacing Self-Management' which also includes gradual increases of physical activity after a long stabilization phase. I think that Nijs and Wallman interpret the term pacing somewhat differently from how ME/CFS...

Sorry if what I wrote was a bit long/detailed and focused on minor points. I'm just going through the different arguments and issues with this review one by one; to see what makes sense. The order doesn't indicate importance. Have to take breaks in between, but I'm planning to go through them...

I'm not following. I don't think Cochrane used the 5.2 SD from Crawley et al. in their effect size calculation. I think they only used it to recalculate those effect sizes to points on the Chalder Fatigue Scale. The PACE trial gave a mean difference of -3.4 for CBT compared to SMC, on the...

Yes, but the 0.44 figure is when you take out the outlier of Powell et al. (2001), so it's relevant to heterogeneity and inconsistency. Regarding imprecision, I calculated the value for the lower bound of the confidence interval wich was an SMD of 0.31. The calculation is quite easy. They have...

5) Fatigue post-treatment should be rated as low instead of moderate quality evidence The other two factors GRADE uses to downgrading quality of evidence are inconsistency and imprecision. I would like to look at these more closely because they are at the heart of David Tovey’s argument that the...

I don't know: what would be a direct outcome of fatigue in your view? Most examples are actually the other way around: it's about objective outcomes that are used as a proxy for how patients are doing/feeling. For example exercise capacity or the number of red blood cells as a proxy for...

4) GRADE: do the oxford criteria constitute indirect evidence? The most recent version of the GRADE handbook can be found here (https://gdt.gradepro.org/app/handbook/handbook.html). In contrast to the Cochrane risk of bias tool, GRADE doesn’t asses individual trials but outcomes such as...

Yes