Opinion Chronic fatigue syndromes: real illnesses that people can recover from, 2023, The Oslo Chronic Fatigue Consortium

It's really remarkable just how much propaganda there is on medical issues. I knew to some degree but it's as bad as what polluting industries and other nasties do. It really raises many questions about how common this is, because it's clearly core to health care policy.
Most “journalism” in the UK consists of copy-pasting, maybe slightly paraphrasing, KCL / SMC press releases.

I suspect there are people within these groups whose job it is to generate the press releases and ensure they're disseminated and picked up. It's an embedded and costly utility to promote. It was one of my responsibilities in the research firm I worked for before I grew too sick. Take a subject, reduce it to boilerplate, front it with a snappy first paragraph. It can be assembly line packaged news, and it saves journals $'s while helping them seem tuned in.
 
Moved post

Article from a research news site with interviews with Professor Silje Reme, Professor Tronstad and the Norwegian ME Association.

Some quotes:

ME patients are often advised to be careful about exerting themselves, so that they do not develop symptoms afterwards.

- This does not happen with the other conditions. We recommend gradually increased activity for all forms of exhaustion. Fatigue and other symptoms after activity are unpleasant, but not dangerous, says Reme.

...

- Neither can PEM, which can be increased fatigue or pain, be measured in the body, but is a subjective experience, says Reme.

The symptoms are undoubtedly real, but they do not always stem from physical illness.

...
(Professor Tronstad)
- We have already analyzed several thousand different molecules in the blood and found extensive differences in ME patients compared to healthy ones. At the same time, there is some variation within the ME group, he says.

...

The ME association does not see any solution in uniting the two research directions on ME - that which looks for biological causes and that which believes that ME is due to a mixture of biological, psychological and social factors.

- They don't talk about the same patient group once, so I don't understand how they can agree. In that case, one side has to say that they were very wrong, says Trude Schei.

Forskning.no: Folk kan bli friske av ME, long covid og utbrenthet, ifølge 50 forskere og leger
google translation: People can recover from ME, long covid and burnout, according to 50 researchers and doctors
 
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ME Association Statement by Dr Charles Shepherd and Russel Fleming

Oslo Chronic Fatigue Consortium 'New Hope' is "More Unhelpful Nonsense"!

quote:

While we focus on trying to bring positive change on behalf of people who have been neglected for far too long, others are choosing to go against evidence-based recommendations and the overwhelming views of the patient community.

This latest effort from Norway appears to confirm that a concerted effort is underway from a handful of professionals – some of whom have clear conflicts of interest – that are once again trying to self-aggrandise at the expense of people who have been maligned and stigmatised.

Their day is done, and they need to recognise this fact. Instead, they should focus their own energies on the positive developments that have been achieved by working with us all to improve health and wellbeing for everyone with ME/CFS.
 
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It really is horrific that a bunch of ignorant and irresponsible clinicians have such an influence over the media. We really do live in a post truth age.
What on earth can we do?

Keep telling the truth. They're very well organized and have a lot of people they can get news to quickly but there has already been a paradigm shift where their treatment isn't the go-to treatment anymore in a lot of places. I consider this Oslo-thingy a nuisance but far from a loss as long as we keep countering their narrative. What they say is old wine in new bottles and we should make that abundantly clear as a community. Seeing the community note on Garner's account, the comments on social media, the pushback from scientists and activists alike I'm actually in a positive frame of mind about this whole ordeal.
 
Moved post

Article from a research news site with interviews with Professor Silje Reme, Professor Tronstad and the Norwegian ME Association.

Some quotes:

ME patients are often advised to be careful about exerting themselves, so that they do not develop symptoms afterwards.

- This does not happen with the other conditions. We recommend gradually increased activity for all forms of exhaustion. Fatigue and other symptoms after activity are unpleasant, but not dangerous, says Reme.

...

- Neither can PEM, which can be increased fatigue or pain, be measured in the body, but is a subjective experience, says Reme.

The symptoms are undoubtedly real, but they do not always stem from physical illness.

...
(Professor Tronstad)
- We have already analyzed several thousand different molecules in the blood and found extensive differences in ME patients compared to healthy ones. At the same time, there is some variation within the ME group, he says.

...

The ME association does not see any solution in uniting the two research directions on ME - that which looks for biological causes and that which believes that ME is due to a mixture of biological, psychological and social factors.

- They don't talk about the same patient group once, so I don't understand how they can agree. In that case, one side has to say that they were very wrong, says Trude Schei.

Forskning.no: Folk kan bli friske av ME, long covid og utbrenthet, ifølge 50 forskere og leger
google translation: People can recover from ME, long covid and burnout, according to 50 researchers and doctors
When I first saw who had written this I thought it was going to be much worse than it was. This is much better than what we've seen from the author previously when it comes to ME!
 
Moved post

Tronstad was interviewed in an article about different views on ME/CFS (the starting point of the discussion is the "Oslo Fatigue Consortium's statements about how patients can become completely healthy with CBT that we have a discussion on here: Chronic fatigue syndromes: real illnesses that people can recover from, 2023, The Oslo Chronic Fatigue Consortium)

Forskning.no: Folk kan bli friske av ME, long covid og utbrenthet, ifølge 50 forskere og leger
google translation: People can recover from ME, long covid and burnout, according to 50 researchers and doctors

There is one new detail about the microcirculation and hypoxia study:
They will have a long covid control group.

For any discussion on the comments from the Oslo Consortium in the forskning.no article, please go to its own thread where the forskning.no article has also been shared: Chronic fatigue syndromes: real illnesses that people can recover from, 2023, The Oslo Chronic Fatigue Consortium

What a muddled mess of an article if the translation is accurate. Tronstad tells about the biological abnormalities that they've found, then Reme gets to chime in with her bullshit. Tronstad and Schei seem to do a good job. PEM is mentioned as the most important factor differentiating ME from other diseases by Schei but isn't elaborated on. Seeing the rest of the article I'd imagine that's an editorial decision rather than hers, but I don't know.

Everything Reme said was bullshit, but this bit by forskning stuck out to me:

Hope for the research
- We are looking for biomarkers that can tell us which patients can benefit from which treatment, says Tronstad.

- We mostly focus on medical treatment. One hypothesis is that ME may be due to an overreaction in the immune system after an infection. It may be that some of the ME patients benefit from treatment that corrects this.

He also does not ignore the fact that new medicines may come out, but believes that it is a shorter way to go by trying out existing medicines.

- But our focus in the new project is to find connections between the changes in the blood samples and what actually happens at the cellular level, says Tronstad.

- We feel that the patients have a lot of hope for our research, he says.

The researchers behind the Oslo Declaration believe that the patients' voices are important, and that it is particularly important to listen to those who have improved or recovered from these conditions.

Tronstad has nothing to do with the Oslo Declaration as far as I know, which decent scientist would? Sticking that last sentence at the end of this paragraph might sow doubt about that for a casual onlooker. It builds on the Oslo groups' bullshit that they're about biological causes but also about psychological and social causes. When in reality they only focus on psychological and social causes, which we of course know can't explain this disease.
 
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News article on Stockholm University's website:

Ny forskning breddar uppfattningar om kroniska utmattningssyndrom och postcovid-tillstånd
https://www.su.se/nyheter/ny-forskn...ningssyndrom-och-postcovid-tillstånd-1.678099

Google Translate, English
Auto-translate said:
A research team has presented new research that broadens the understanding of chronic fatigue syndrome, including CFS/ME and post-covid conditions, which have sometimes been seen as incurable diseases. The findings may provide new hope for patients suffering from these conditions. [...]
 
from the autotranslate in @mango 's post above
A research team has presented new research that broadens the understanding of chronic fatigue syndrome, including CFS/ME and post-covid conditions, which have sometimes been seen as incurable diseases. The findings may provide new hope for patients suffering from these conditions.
they really are extraordinary. We get a miniscule bit of traction in some quarters that actually the old paradigm might just be wrong, and they present the old paradigm as being a completely new one and the press start fawning all over them... again.

I mean what the actual _ ?

Its just surreal
 
Similar to Dr Norman Swan today on ABC radio at 6:15 — "[Graded exercise therapy] is controversial with a small group of people with chronic fatigue syndrome. But if you look at the ... population of people who've got ME/chronic fatigue syndrome, there is good evidence that cognitive behavioural therapy, in the absence of medical therapy... what are you going to do? Are you going to sit with your symptoms?"

The bit in bold... This is what some doctors have been expecting of women with all sorts of diseases since the time of the Ancient Greeks, so it isn't new.
 
"a gradual and controlled approach to increasing activity is crucial for rehabilitation".

There is nothing controlled or gradual about how you are supposed to behave after LP. The 2 approaches are diametrically different, you basically can't support/suggest both!

GET proponents claim that harms from GET are from not doing it correctly but with Lighting Process there is a free for all about how one behaves after it. You are basically signalling you are not truly concerned about the safety of patients or that you don't really care about the details of a graded activity program if you promote LP.

 
Today there is a paywalled article in Dagens Medisin, with quotes from Reme and Sharpe.

Subheadings are "Saw a need for a review of the science", "Real symptoms" and "Encourages and open dialogue". Apparently they have gotten a lot of positive feedback from psychologists and doctors.

And again, I wish journalists could do a small amount of background research when it comes to this. Here Reme claims that for the past 40 years there has been no biomarker found so it is time to look at psychological factors. It can't be difficult to find the hole in this reasoning (and the rest of what is being said).
 
Here Reme claims that for the past 40 years there has been no biomarker found so it is time to look at psychological factors. It can't be difficult to find the hole in this reasoning (and the rest of what is being said).
If that reasoning held water it would undo the history of pretty much every known disease, i.e., every disease would be rooted in psychological factors - until technology or innovative/lucky thinking found a biomarker. So all diseases would be assumed psychological until Science finally catches up with reality.

Which sort of says it all about psychology as a medical utility.
 
Psychosomatic explanations for illness are a placeholder that exists to control patients until the biomedical science catches up and makes the illness treatable.

Get the patients high on positive thinking and they won't bother others with their complaints. Alternatively, instill in them belief that they brought this on themselves and have no medical problem and then they won't waste the doctor's time (who can't help anyway).
 
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Today there is a paywalled article in Dagens Medisin, with quotes from Reme and Sharpe.

Subheadings are "Saw a need for a review of the science", "Real symptoms" and "Encourages and open dialogue". Apparently they have gotten a lot of positive feedback from psychologists and doctors.

And again, I wish journalists could do a small amount of background research when it comes to this. Here Reme claims that for the past 40 years there has been no biomarker found so it is time to look at psychological factors. It can't be difficult to find the hole in this reasoning (and the rest of what is being said).


It’s this inversion of reality by switching the subject/object fur every single fact to make it look like they aren’t the old and dodgy psych isn’t the only thing allowed to be looked into for 40yr etc that makes me think they aren’t just deluded but are calculated. There is constructivism where you distort your own reality and then there’s learning to keep a straight face whilst you swear black is white and that you’ve no idea where the cake went even though you know you’ve hit chocolate all over your face that the person you are swearing blind to must also see.

in this case it’s being the one nicking all the funding each year fir forty years trying to pretend ‘it’s their turn now’ , again , just like we are a bunch of toys/pawns to predate on as a game of funding where doing the least useful thing for the end-user is s laugh because it isn’t measured and track record of having applied for the same funding to do the same iterative was always going to be useless thing wasn’t going to result in nothing useful do you can gravy train by saying nothing works yet again the next year. As if it doesn’t massively harm pwme in the process and that doesn’t matter anyway.
 
KBT kan hjälpa mot extrem trötthet vid postcovid
https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/kbt-kan-hjalpa-mot-extrem-trotthet
Auto-translate said:
CBT can help with extreme tiredness in post-covid syndrome
[audio] 1:51 min

A new Dutch study shows that cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can be effective in reducing severe fatigue in post-covid patients.

63 per cent of those who received CBT were no longer bothered by fatigue when they were followed up after six months.

Researcher Elin Lindsäter, from the Gustavsberg medical centre in Stockholm, is planning a similar study on 500 severely fatigued patients in primary care: "It's a very large group of patients suffering from severe fatigue."

"Many patients were initially hesitant about therapy, saying they had physical problems, but afterwards they were surprisingly positive," says researcher and psychologist Hans Knoop of the University of Amsterdam.

Hans Knoop has developed a cognitive behavioural therapy treatment for patients suffering from severe fatigue. It involves improving sleeping habits, gradually increasing activity, and learning to manage negative thoughts about fatigue, pain and anxiety about the disease. And a number of previous studies of patients with diabetes 1 and MS, for example, have shown that inactivity and anxiety can contribute to fatigue, and need to be treated, according to Mr Knoop.

According to the National Board of Health and Welfare, extreme and prolonged fatigue is common among post-covid patients, making it difficult for them to work and care for their families. The new Dutch study of 114 post-covid patients shows that 63% of those who received cognitive behavioural therapy did not recover.
(Sveriges Radio is Sweden's national publicly funded radio broadcaster.)

Comments on the article by @MittEremltage on their blog:

Gammal skåpmat
https://mitteremitage.wordpress.com/2023/10/02/gammal-skapmat/
Auto-translate said:
Same old story

[...] The fact that first Stockholm University and now Swedish Radio take up the same subject within a few days is most likely no coincidence. Lindsäter and Knoop are both part of the same network as Lekander who was interviewed in the Stockholm University article [...].

In the report on Swedish Radio there is no title or link to the Dutch research on which the news is based. But it should reasonably be about a study entitled "Efficacy of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Targeting Severe Fatigue Following Coronavirus Disease 2019: Results of a Randomized Controlled Trial" published on 8 May this year in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

I myself have not had the capacity to follow the study or read the latest article, but David Tuller, journalist and teacher of public health at the University of California, Berkeley, writes about it on the Virolgy blog where he has been reviewing this type of research for many years [...]

So it is a study like this that Elin Lindsäter is planning to conduct in Stockholm's primary care. She shares the article on her LinkedIn and reading what she writes about it can give you a little idea of what to expect.

"Short report in Ekot today that tells about the clinical study that I and my colleagues are preparing for in primary care in the Stockholm region. It is particularly important when the choice of care for long-term pain, exhaustion disorder and ME/CFS is discontinued in 2025 that we equip ourselves and investigate new methods for identifying and treating severe fatigue in the first line."

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) is not mentioned among the diagnoses in the SR article, but given Lindsätter's comment above, and the focus of the network she is part of, there is reason to believe that people with ME will also be included in the upcoming study.

Finally, a brief comment on the claim that this treatment approach would be something new and therefore worth testing on all patients with fatigue. This is what SBU writes in its systematic review of the treatment of ME in 2018 [...]

Thus, what is presented as news today seems to be nothing but old, unreliable (and potentially harmful) junk. Again.
 
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