Blog: PACE trial: Whatever happened to actigraphy?

[Indigophoton]

A new blog post by @Lucibee,

In my first blog about the PACE trial, I discussed the lack of objective measures, and the bothersome issue of not knowing how much participants actually managed to increase their activity, because this wasn’t recorded.

The one thing that bothers me about the GET results is that we have absolutely no idea by how much patients in this group actually managed to increase their activity. The therapists’ manual encourages patients to do up to 30 minutes of exercise a day, which seems quite a lot for patients with ME/CFS. But how many achieved this? Did anyone get anywhere near this? The only thing we have to go on is the results of the 6-min walking test, at which the GET group did slightly better (an average 67m improvement vs 21m for CBT, 22m for SMC, and 20m for APT). However, even by the end of the trial, the mean distance achieved by those in the GET group (379m) was still below the lower limit for healthy individuals (mean 570m [range 380-780m]). All the participants were given pedometers and heart-rate monitors to assess their baseline activity, but regrettably results from them weren’t published, so we have no objective measure of daily activity or whether it improved over the course of the trial.

https://lucibee.wordpress.com/2018/05/09/pace-trial-whatever-happened-to-actigraphy/

 

[Lucibee]

Thanks @Indigophoton

If I've made any errors, please let me know.

 

[Esther12]

Nice one - thanks for the summary.

 

[Barry]

I would find this hilarious ... if it didn't make me angry and want to cry. Positively confirms in writing that in the Dutch study there was no change in actigraphy, so what did they conclude from this? That the interventions did not improve patients actual physical function? No ... of course they didn't! They concluded it did not reinforce their screwed thinking about subjective measures, so it was therefore "not a good outcome measure" ... so they ditched it! You really could not make this stuff up could you!!! I suppose there is some truth in it not being a good outcome measure ... for the investigators who still need to cling to their fantasy-riddled ideas. What the hell are they on?!