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I appreciate your desire not to seek medical advice and I hesitate to respond but in this situation I think I should make some comments. The overriding risk with prednisolone at this dosage is gastrointestinal bleeding. Above about 20mg daily the risk is significant, although chiefly in older...

Looking more closely it seems that people were told they might get a placebo but they were not told the objective of the study or that everyone was going to get a placebo. That sounds equally illegal.

I haven't looked at this in detail but it sounds as if the study was illegal - giving people placebos without them knowing it. That is not full informed consent. You can probably be sent to prison for that! Or at least dismissed from your job for misconduct.

This is a review written as part of the EU COST Action grant. It includes people from various European countries. This really has nothing to do with funding actual research projects. It is a networking and communications exercise. As to whether German grant giving bodies give enough attention...

Does he disclose a conflict of interest? Like earning a living?

Until death has been cured I am not sure that the term cure is ever more than an asymptote of hope. But is cure necessary? Lot of conditions are kept under complete control for years - and often until something else ends the story. We have to eat food to keep alive. We are not without...

I am sorry but this lady sees to be in cloud cuckoo land - and sexist. This stuff about trials only being on men is nonsense. Women are excluded if they cannot guarantee not to be pregnant and the treatment might be dangerous for a foetus. Otherwise there has never been any discrimination...

I think Dr Vogt may be worried that scientists can actually see inside his brain and see how hot it is. Moreover, they can do it through cookies on his cellphone without him even knowing. All the scientists in California are giggling over all the strange temperature spots in his brain. No wonder...

I said most districts because it does not always apply. However, if there were no health centres there could be twice as many hospitals. And for those outside town doctors based in hospitals (where they can keep up to date on knowing what they are doing) can do local clinics or old fashioned...

If we were not sure about the diagnosis we covered all the important and reasonably likely options - often by a period of observation and monitoring vital signs. Not getting the diagnosis straight away was common and provisional diagnoses were sometimes wrong. But I am not sure what any of that...

The blurb gives pretty little idea of what the science is about. In general I am pretty sceptical about the idea of recruiting patients through adverts. The people who respond may be unrepresentative for all sorts of reasons, especially if the research centre has a reputation for being...

I worry that we are providing medical advice here. Medical advice is not just recommending prescription medicines but any advice given in medical situation, including advice that might delay getting a medical opinion. Weight loss and diarrhoea for 8 weeks requires a medical diagnosis following...

It sounds as if you need medical advice. If you are acutely concerned that may mean accident and emergency. I assume you are in the UK and the GP system has really ceased to function for anything of serious importance.

Yes. Also if you cool the skin the hypothalamus may think it needs to increase metabolism and heat the core up further - including the brain.

How do you access this @Sasha?

No, not bad for science. Good that we all know what has been going on. Real science can cope with that. Bad science might be worried.

I think this is what we need to avoid. 'Regenerative medicine' is a phoney term banded about by people who want to get money for 'stem cell' research. I have involuntarily been part of the UCL 'regenerative medicine' consortium for about ten years and all I ever saw was politicos taking rhubarb...

They probably did have projects waiting. Research projects into brain tumours are easy to think of because you can grow the cells in the lab and study animal tumours and try out different drugs and so on. The problem with ME is that it is unclear what to do. Raising awareness amongst...

My impression is that although NICE may have made a bodge of selecting stakeholders for the initial meetings there were enough relevant people there to make the important points. From now on I suspect 'stakeholders' are not involved in the process, just the committee that gets formed...

Yes, that crossed my mind. For me it was bog standard advice from an old clinical researcher to a younger researcher who might not have any direct clinical background.