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Another important point that has been raised in many contributions here: In empirical sciences, it is impossible—or at least very difficult—to prove a negative. Even if we could identify processes that are relevant to the pathology of ME/CFS, one can always argue that there are other, unknown...

This is an important point! The controversy about the Cognitive Model for ME/CFS is not whether the are psychological symptoms in ME/CFS, but whether there are causal psychological factors or—in other words—whether the illness can be reversed by thoughts available to the consciousness. The...

@Jonathan Edwards. Previously, I have used the following definition of a syndrome like ME/CFS. Do you think it agrees with your position? A syndrome is a set of symptoms and/or signs that occur in combination much more often than expected by chance. If you have a malfunction of a complex...

Geraghty’s review of the biopsychosocial model for ME/CFS may be useful. However, I have the same impression as @Jonathan Edwards. The model says that patients develop ME/CFS during the recovery phase, after the initial infection. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6482658/

Thank you, @Jonathan Edwards, for an interesting article. I am concerned that ME advocates often exaggerate physiological abnormalities reported in the literature, both in terms of how robust they are and what conclusions we can draw about the underlying pathology. Exaggerated claims only serve...

Is this some kind of sick joke? “Defend discredited strategies for recovery to the last drop of blood” would be more accurate.

The problem with statements like these is the implication that you recover because you recreate your lifeworld. It is quite natural that a person recovering from a chronic condition changes their lifeworld. It doesn’t mean that they recover because of it.

I always find formulations like this very suspicious. How do you provide a biospsychosocial explanation—or any other explanation, for that matter—for a condition of unknown aetiology and pathogenesis?

Good paper, thanks Tom. It is interesting to notice that they mention encephalitis lethargica in the review. It is a neurological illness that appeared in several epidemics during the first decades of the 1900s. The lethality was alarming, several tens of percent, and many patients were severely...

If the authors of the commentary pray hard enough, maybe the Cochrane review will disappear by divine intervention! ;)

Thanks for posting this study overview. Regionshospitalet Silkeborg is located in Denmark.

I think it is unlikely that ME/CFS is caused by a persistent viral or bacterial infection, but that we shouldn’t completely rule this possibility out. IMO, the most likely explanation is that an initial infection or other trigger starts a pathway, which is perpetuated independently of the trigger.

Another way of phrasing “catastrophic thinking predicts fatigue in IBD” is “negative thoughts because you have a chronic illness with distressing symptoms is correlated with having distressing symptoms because you have a chronic illness”. Wow! This is groundbreaking research! :facepalm:

That surprises me. It seems that impedance measurements of cells is a standard method for cell analysis. Low-frequency (less than 1 kHz) and high-frequency (a few tens of kHz) impedance typically differ and give different information about the cell characteristics. Am I missing something here...

This issue raises another question: How do you verify the validity of diagnostic criteria when there is no gold standard? Reliability means that something is robust with respect to random errors, and validity means that it is robust with respect to systematic errors. The reliability of criteria...

It took three years before I got a diagnosis of ME/CFS. Doctors I met before that often tried to reassure me with comments such as "don't worry" and "I wouldn't worry if I were you". I think it is cruel to give the patient the impression that everything will be fine and instead let the patient...

I think the authors have misunderstood the term “multisystem illness”. It is not a strictly medical term but is used in the IOM/NAM report to characterize ME/CFS (“The primary message of this report is that ME/CFS is a serious, chronic, complex, multisystem disease that frequently and...

The issue was never mind–body dualism or the distinction between psychiatric and somatic illness. That statement is a red herring repeated ad-nauseam. The issue is whether ME/CFS is psychogenic in nature and whether the illness may be reversed or significantly improved with thoughts accessible...

Swedish Myalgisk encefalomyelit/Kroniskt trötthetssyndrom (both the English acronym ME/CFS and the Swedish ME/KTS are used). Note that "trötthet" in Swedish is weaker than English fatigue and may also be translated as "tiredness".

Thank you, Michiel, for bringing the subject up and thank you for providing the list. I would like to rephrase point 1. All confirmative studies of ME/CFS should be pre-registered, but there must also be room for explorative studies and confirmative studies that are complemented with explorative...