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This review from Scheibenbogen's group says the following: 2.3.1. Autoantibodies against nuclear and membrane structures Antinuclear antibodies (ANA) were found in one study in 68 % of ME/CFS patients with the majority directed against the nuclear envelope [51]. Further studies showed ANA in...

I thought Walitt was a rheumatologist. I'm very surprised he showed no interest in this.

I can't believe Nath's media comments. Trials? On the basis of a terrible n=17 study which found no evidence of a virus or anything clearly wrong with the immune system.

The 2-day CPET literature isn’t clear-cut at all and different studies have reported different abnormalities (and lack thereof). This has been discussed at length in different threads. I do think this was a missed opportunity, as 2-day CPET findings require independent replication. Though with...

Natural History of Post-Coronavirus Disease 19 Convalescence at the National Institutes of Health The principal investigator listed on this is Walitt (scroll to the bottom). We have another paper of this sort to "look forward to".

Looks like Walitt and Nath are in charge of the Long Covid study at the NIH. At the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), Senior Investigator Avindra Nath, who’s known for his work on how infections affect the brain, and his colleague Brian Walitt(external link) have...

That's quite a stretch. This study doesn't prove anything. They've found basically nothing.

Data entry errors in Supplemental data file 6 which reports results of neuropsychological tests used to detect malingering. The means and standard deviations are the same for controls and ME/CFS patients for every test, down to each decimal, which is impossible.

Yeah. Safe to assume we can't take anything they've written in the main article at face value and need to comb through the supplemental data files ourselves.

I can't find info on titres. It doesn't say what cut-off they used for positive.

They don't comment much on this but I found it buried in a supplement that 24% of ME/CFS patients had positive antinuclear antibodies and only 5% of controls (p=.09 but I wouldn't pay much attention to lack of statistical significance in such a tiny sample).

No doubt it doesn’t help. Likely it will damage us in all sorts of ways. Can’t eat/swallow? You can prefer your way out of that.

Agreed. The description of the disease by the paper does not ring true to me. As someone who has POTS, I can only do so much. After a certain point, I can’t physically push through the shortness of breath, weak muscles and tachycardia. It’s sit/lie down or literally collapse on the floor.

Of course. It was obvious from the start. Many of us were pointing out the huge red flags, like the 1-day CPET, the gruelling protocol which would prevent moderate and severe participants from taking part, the background of key investigators like Walitt (FM is psychosomatic) and Hallett (major...

They make our symptoms sound like a minor nuisance, an annoying itch or something.

How do we find out? Is there any reason to suspect that ME/CFS may have something to do with long-lived plasma cells which would explain why RTX didn't work?

According to this email from Walitt posted on social media, all participants had PEM. https://x.com/sharonc97936831/status/1760457561768067322

The accompanying editorial delves into why this works better than CD20 depleting drugs like rituximab. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2400203

The paper says the following:

Discussion These data provide evidence for the feasibility, preliminary efficacy, and side-effect profile of CD19 CAR T-cell therapy in patients with severe autoimmune disease. Despite differences in disease entities and previous treatments, the dynamics of CAR T-cell expansion and of B-cell...