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Looks like the CFS data in this meta-analysis consists almost solely of the paper by Giloteaux et al. 2016 (and some papers by Maes which I have my doubts about). So it might be more useful to simply read that paper. Giloteaux L, Goodrich JK, Walters WA, Levine SM, Ley RE, Hanson MR. Reduced...

I have submitted a commentary to this paper, back in October but it is still being reviewed, apparently.

Interesting looks like some serious problems for the HADS. The sensitivity/specificity criteria were not that high (0.8 and 0.7) and they simply looked at depression or/and anxiety so the questionnaire didn't have to differentiate between the two. Nonetheless, the HADS failed to obtain the...

Yes, but they will also test many other things including different ME/CFS criteria. I think the CFQ biggest problems are with its use in treatment trials (because of the interpretation problems and ceiling effects). In cases like this, I think it's not that bad that it would ruin an entire...

The study actually looks interesting. Look forward to seeing the results. IMHO: the more researchers doing prospective studies on COVID-19 cases, the better (even if they have published bad studies in the past). We have to use the occasion to get valuable data on this.

Sounds interesting but there are some big caveats. What I would like to see is a big study that follows up on a large group of patients with a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis of which only a small group will go on to develop long term symptoms. That would provide a representative sample of the...

Looks like an interesting study. I short, they tested pain, fatigue and concentration difficulties for a period of up to 7 days after head-up tilt testing. While the symptom score increased slightly in the ME/CFS (with or without fibromyalgia) it remained fat around zero in healthy controls...

I accidentally posted this in the wrong thread (here) but it was a comment on this study: The authors conclude: 99.1% of fibromyalgia patients said they had 'fatigue after exertion' but I don't think more stringent measures of PEM were used. It also seems that participants did not undergo an...

There are multiple differences between the populations studied by Baraniuk and the Iranian study so their prevalences might not be directly comparable unless there are some huge differences (e.g. 5-10 times higher in the post-COVID-19 population). That wasn't the case here and I suspect that's...

This looks like the first study that tested for ME/CFS six months after COVID-19. Unfortunately, they didn't do a proper medical examination as most case definitions of ME/CFS require. They simply used a questionnaire where patients could indicate the severity of each of the Fukuda-criteria...

Yes it's frustrating that they don't simply report the change for the whole group. They report data for 66 responders and 20 responders but that is still less than the 101 patients who took Aripiprazole. Is that due to missing values? The 50% reduction was seen only in the group that got better...

I think few respected ME/CFS experts would think it is a good idea to make subgroups based on the markers and measurements used in this study. As far as I'm aware nobody is doing so or proposing to make that subdivision. Most ME/CFS experts, however, think it is a good idea to differentiate a...

Just to clarify that the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) is the organisation of epilepsy specialists and researchers that also prints the scientific journal Epilepsia. So it's not an advocacy group or patient organisation and they have published several case definitions of epilepsy...

I still have my doubts about this because most of these studies were really small. Not sure if these results will hold up in a proper study with a pre-specified protocol, large sample size, adequate control groups etc.

Yes but in ME/CFS there aren't even non-specific biomarkers. A person can be incredibly sick yet his main test come back pretty much normal. I'm not sure but I suspect in most other illnesses it will be easier to find abnormalities, even with low specificity, if a person has gotten so ill.

IMHO, the most important thing a hypothesis needs to explain is how a mechanism could cause the severe and chronic disability seen in ME/CFS while not showing any major disturbances in normal medical tests and various markers that have been tested repeatedly in ME/CFS patients. That's one of the...

In English, I think we can simply use the word illness if people find disorder or syndrome too confusing, so I largely agree with Jonathan (in Dutch we don't have the distinction illness - disease which makes things more complicated). Just wanted to flag that the 2014 definition of the...

I'm disappointed that OMF and Bergquist sent out an email to highlight this paper.

I'm not impressed either. I hope the current generation of ME/CFS researchers can come up with better hypotheses than this. HPA-axis, cortisol, growth hormone, thyroid hormones, cytokines, oxidative stress etc. all these things have been studied in the past 30 years without showing anything...

Last year there was this large trial on CBT for PNES, called CODES, but the results for the primary outcome were negative. It reported: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(20)30128-0/fulltext David Tuller wrote about it here...