Cochrane Exercise Review Withdrawn - Individual Patient Data

An illness definition based on a single nonspecific symptom cannot be taken seriously. It should be obvious to anyone that it's meaningless. The people behind this attempt to revive the Oxford criteria appear to intend using ME/CFS to give some credibility to this.

Even from a language point of view it makes no sense. A syndrome is a collection of symptoms. A single symptom is not a syndrome.

 

They’ve been going on about this IPD meta analysis of exercise since we were still on the other forum. It’s going to suffer from the same methodological issues as conventional meta analysis based on summary data. IPD makes no difference. I’d say they’ll probably just submit it to a regular journal and forget about Cochrane. Another thing to look forward to.

 

yes, they will do that. I wonder which journal they'll pick. hopefully there will be a pre-print which we can have a look at and critique!

 

Yea, I don't know what "IPD meta analysis" is but check out this*. Basic problem is the base studies are so poor [unblinded & lack of objective outcome indicators] that you cannot derive reliable data from them "garbage in, garbage out"*--- so why don't the authors just "own up" to that?
@Caroline Struthers
*
https://www.s4me.info/threads/germa...ort-out-now-may-2023.21266/page-7#post-448824

 

IPD meta analysis just means analysing individual participant data from original studies (pooling them all together) instead of the usual meta-analytic approach of using summary data from published studies (eg means, standard deviations) to pool the results of many studies. It can’t overcome the methodological problems of original studies. It just compounds them into one big stew.

 

How does an IPD meta analysis work?

Does it focus on the probably few patients with good results and claim the improvement can be attributed to the intervention?

 

No

 

Why are they doing IPD analysis then? It sounds like IPD would make it easier to obtain statistically significant positive results. But didn't the previous review already obtain them? Maybe they're hoping to get positive results on wider range of outcomes?

Obviously it doesn't do anything to make the results credible because the data was obtained in a context of no blinding and probably inadequate control with an intervention that introduces bias.

 

A clear concise summary of what Cochrane does in general!

 

They get combined if deemed similar enough.

 

Something tells me that such an analysis would be very bad for them, and probably explains why they tried making one that was so biased that it ended up being withdrawn.

There is no way it makes the trial looks good. But they did get away with overlapping entry and recovery thresholds so who even knows what else they could be allowed to do here.

 

It apparently doesn't take much to decide they are similar.
In the 2014 systematic treatment evidence review conducted in the US, the authors pooled all Counseling and Behavior Therapies (including CBT), together and then concluded that, collectively, these therapies improved fatigue, function, quality of life, and global improvement.

It took many months and letters to get them to agree to reanalyze the evidence after separating out CBT from other forms of counseling and also separating out Oxford trials.

In the 2016 reanalysis addendum, the authors explained their rationale for originally combining the counseling and behavior trials as follows:
"Although there is enough variability amongst the other techniques [other than CBT] that a meta-analysis might be inappropriate, all involve supportive guidance aimed at improving coping strategies and reducing impact of one’s disease state on overall well-being justifying the decision to consider these together as a group. Although CBT is a unique approach with disputable underlying rationale regarding the fear avoidance theory contributing to the perpetuation of symptoms in ME/CFS, it has similar aims of improving coping strategies and improving overall well-being. We considered this as justification for our original approach of combining all interventions when determining the overall strength of evidence of this body of literature."


edited to correct spelling

 

Or maybe enough to just be similar on intended outcomes - "improving coping strategies and improving overall well-being."

 

but they arent even saying they have the same underlying theory. Far from containing 'roughly the same chemicals', differing psychotheraputic orientations often stem from significantly different underlying theories (eg cognitive behavioural, psychoanalytical & humanistic therapies are chalk & cheese is many ways). They are saying that they had the same aims.

Which really is very silly to combine treatments based on the same aims. I mean imagine combining results from 5 different painkillers simply because they were all aiming to reduce pain.