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I haven't even mastered long division yet, which might give you some indication of my grasp of the subject! – but there are many ways to interrogate and interpret data already, and in three or four years' time machine learning will presumably have gone through another exponential expansion in...

I agree what others have said above, but I think it's also got horribly tangled up with the symptoms of clinical depression. Some patients experience a profound sense of inertia, and remain immobile all day for extended periods because they're unable to force themselves to move. As...

I agree, but he's both very unwell and on one heck of a learning curve. It probably took me three or four years after diagnosis to begin to frame my views and feelings about ME in language that was both reasonably accurate and appropriate, and by that time I'd actually been ill for more than...

This is just brilliant. HUGE congratulations to everyone involved!

It must be very worrying for extremely vulnerable people of working age, who will stop being eligible for UK statutory sick pay on 1 August (unless they have a fit note for the virus or another illness). We don't yet know what's going to happen as the restrictions ease. If the virus starts...

The nurse who did my coronavirus test this morning (it's a research project, I'm not ill) told me that they've had their training updated on how long the virus may survive on surfaces. She doesn't know the source of the information, only that it's been passed to them to assist with quarantining...

Some researchers have predicted that this will happen, but the virus is being so successful at the moment that – presumably – there isn't much pressure on it to evolve to be less likely to kill its hosts?

Me neither, and it seems to be consistent across the mild/moderate patients I meet face to face. When fully rested we can all do tasks with an aerobic component, and we feel great whilst doing them. Then tomorrow dawns – and worse still, the day after that. Our experience seems to be the...

Thank you for the link, I didn't realise that was out there. :) The friend's PVF took about 10 months to resolve (she was unable to work at all for seven months and had to do a gradual return), but fortunately she did make a full recovery. She never developed PEM or apparent immune symptoms.

But is there a difference between post-viral fatigue, and post-viral syndromes? My friend had post-viral fatigue after glandular fever/mono in her early 40s. I just checked with her and she didn't experience a whole variety of symptoms, only brain fog and feeling as if she was wearing 19th...

I wouldn't advise it, unless it's researched for ME – and that won't happen unless someone at least starts with an observational study on ME patients prescribed it for other conditions. It carries risks like all drugs, and needs regular blood tests to check liver & kidney function and blood...

Just an improvement in daily function. It's always hard to pin these things down, but other people noticed before I did; one said I seemed to have got new batteries, another whom I met for coffee after a gap of several months said it was great to see me looking so much better. Of course, some...

I'm so sorry to hear this has happened to you. I take promethazine regularly for nausea, and it does cause sedation and make your thinking a bit fuzzy, specially if you're not used to it. It's longer acting than some drugs (people using it for travel sickness can take it the night before...

I've long wished someone would keep half an eye on ME patients who're prescribed sulfasalazine for another condition, to see whether they report changes. My N=1 response is no use to anyone, but if it's real and could improve the level of daily function for others too, it's a cheap, fairly...

I wonder, though, whether the unfortunate possibility of a rash of new cases developing among respected medical professionals will actually benefit the ME cause in the medium term? The difficulty for existing 'reliable witnesses' within the medical profession (putting aside the politics of why...

Whatever happens among the scientists (with or without quotation marks), the gammon is already out and shouting in the comments section – trying to link it to anything from political correctness, so-called benefit scroungers, and even Brexit. The BBC has closed it for further comments.

Yes, I did – cost me £10 for the DVD. It's available to you under GDPR, and your hospital will have its own procedure for submitting a Subject Access Request. At the moment there might be a delay, or they might even have suspended the service, but it will be available eventually.

The cause barely matters anyway at this stage. It's been clear for many years that there are multiple triggers, and there's little point in being obsessively protective of one or another of them. Even if a person becomes ill with ME soon after after a clearly-defined single event – be it EBV, a...

Probably not, then – I got an 8-page leaflet explaining what they're doing and why, and it's all marked ONS. I've taken part in their surveys a few times before, which is presumably why they asked me. I'm not hugely worried about the privacy aspect, but I am a bit disappointed that, whilst they...

Is this separate from the ONS survey? I've been part of that since the outset, but it started in early April. They were originally planning to extend the numbers taking part, and they may still be doing this, but as yours is a single sample it may be a different project. (I was swabbed every...