Trial By Error: CBT and Irritable Bowel Syndrome

For years, CBT has been used successfully to treat health issues like chronic pain (4) heart disease (5) and multiple sclerosis (6). Parallel takes CBT online to help reduce the severity of IBS.

That looks like a very lawyerly piece of drafting. It claims only that the use was successful. It makes no claims as to the success of the treatment.

 

Moss-Morris' name is on all but one paper. Chalder on two (of 8).

So those papers and trials, including the latest one, had the express purpose of promoting a commercial product. Authored by a shareholder in the product. OK, then. This is definitely good and well-intentioned science with great ethics and sound methdology.

 

yes and the stock options were not mentioned in the IBS study. Just the payment.

 

Can't help but think of Mahana apples. An apple a day...
Surely MAT (Mahana Apple Therapy) would be cheaper than digital CBT - and possibly safer and more effective, at least for IBS-C.

 

Seems this hasn't been shared yet?

Trial by Error: My FOI Request to King's College London: My Letter to Mahana Therapeutics

Yesterday I sent a freedom-of-information request to King’s College London about the recently announced licensing deal it has with Mahana Therapeutics. The deal involves a web-based CBT program for irritable bowel syndrome, which I have written about here and here. This morning I sent a note to the e-mail address for press contact listed on Mahana’s site.

http://www.virology.ws/2020/01/27/t...dLacr8XRRh_zHdBRJ_9KbqnZv8UkX_WzNwo2sRhwnSnAw

 

Seems strange that Mahana is a Bangla name, yet none of the founders are from India!?!

 

I thought it was probably a typo for Manana. As in pay for the therapy now and we guarantee that you'll get better... Sometime... Perhaps.

 

None of the Founders are Hawaiian or Maori either, so it still seems like cultural appropriation...

 

My alleged IBS, that I was diagnosed with many times over many years, turned out to be a physical problem that was 95% cured with surgery. Nearly 20 years later there has been some minor deterioration over the years but I'd still say the "cure" I got is keeping 85% of the pain and associated problems away (in the area where the corrective surgery was done - I still have other areas of bowel in dire need of attention).

 

Can anyone see the purpose of the word "clinically" in that quote?

 

it is a very badly written sentence that is meant I think to read: "with clinically effective and cost-effective treatments..."
the word "effective" is meant to relate to both clinically and "cost-"--or so I think.

 

I would assume she means cutting down on clinic time spent on these patients in addition to reducing the costs of prescribed medication etc.

 

Trial by Error: More on the Mahana Therapeutics Deal

In the end this big licensing deal seems like a lot of noise about very little. But I assume someone somewhere will be making money from it. Nice!

Judging by the website, Parallel is Mahana’s only product. But get ready for more good news down the line! Here’s what we also learn on the site:

Mahana is currently developing a personalized digital treatment for adolescents and adults with Inflammatory Bowel Disease. This product will be tested in a series of research studies and randomized, controlled trials. This treatment will tap into the power of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to help patients living with IBD.

 

The "power" to change answers on a questionnaire is a sight to behold!

I hope the IBD community reacts accordingly. The ME-BPS paradigm is deadly and inflicts massive suffering. For IBS, it's more of useless nonsense that is insulting but is unlikely to lead to serious injury. IBD is a whole other issue, though. People will die if they swallow the onion and pursue this instead of real medical treatment.

 

It sure saves a lot of work and money. I.e. rather than looking at gut microbiome and correlating that to symptoms of IBS and trying to understand if altered microbiome is cause or effect --- lots of complicated questions. Just talk nice to people and rake in the cash with this "treatment".

One question I have is are the indicators of "improvement" objective? I don't trust questionnaires; show interest in people, who are generally ignored, and get them to fill in a questionnaire --- very suspect.

 

well I have some sympathy for them on that aspect because there really aren't good biomarkers to use for IBS studies. The findings were all subjective questionnaires--the main one a symptom severity scale for IBS that's a fairly standard thing. And it showed very modest improvements on that. They did not use objective findings like more days at work or reduced use of health services that could have been proxy measures indicative of possible objective changes.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1222283042787557377