Protocol Online cognitive training for people with cognitive impairment following SARS-CoV-2 infection: A randomised controlled clinical trial, 2024, Corbett

'It's not a way to live': New study from Exeter team could offer hope for Long Covid sufferers

My foggy brain seemed to deduce three main things from this news item:

1. A young woman called Amber Rawlinson has long COVID and is struggling with what sounds identical to ME.

2. Dr David Strain works at Exeter University and talks briefly about the condition.

3. Professor Anne Corbett from the uni is working with Beacon, based on work done with brain training puzzles on older adults who had already shown signs of cognitive decline. (I think this refers to dementia.)

https://www.itv.com/news/westcountr...ew-study-offers-hope-for-long-covid-sufferers

I really don't think this will have any benefit.

 

I wonder it the study has objective outcomes - since it appears to be unblinded.

 

"The primary outcome will be cognition measured by the FLAME computerised cognitive test battery, with secondary outcomes of cognition, function, fatigue, mood and quality of life. Service use and employment will be collected to support a health economics analysis. Analysis will follow an intention-to-treat approach in adults over 40 with a secondary analysis with the whole trial population."

https://fundingawards.nihr.ac.uk/award/NIHR203603

 

That honestly sounds like a good way to give cognitive pem

 

Problem basically solved. Life so wretched by illness that it's not worth living? Here's a puzzle game to distract you. Good grief we are in such mediocre hands.

It's really the same everywhere, humans only accomplish things because of a mass of billions trying all the things for millennia, individual intelligence is almost irrelevant. But in health care, the consequences are immediate and made quickly worse by time, so it's felt a lot more directly. It's not just that it takes a decade more to make a technological leap or build a power plant or roads, it's people suffering and dying while so-called experts dick around doing useless nonsense.

 

Dr Strain's hopeful but delusive fantasy. Can't he do better than that? He's wasting time, funding, resources. For what? This does not deserve the stupid publicity it's getting. For Long Covid patients with PEM doing puzzles just causes more PEM, it does not retrain the brain.

 

£335k being spent on this and yet extension of Danny Altmann's immunology study of pwLong Covid plus a cohort of pwME seems not to have been funded.

The original study was a bit over £525k

 

What if that money went into confirmation of the WASF3 findings. Like I can see so many ways this money can have hundreds of times more impact than this.

 

I would be a bit surprised if this could be double blind.I am not sure what another taks with 'no learning effects' means. I wouldn't have thought that the test app was intended to produce learning.

I get involved in all sorts of cognitive tasks up and down as days go by and I have difficulty seeing how that would have much effect on my ability to use my brain later when I have post covid problems. It depends on whether or not I feel up to it.

I wonder where ReaCT comes from?

 

He's not listed in the protocol, so maybe it's just that he works at the same uni and is involved with ME and Long Covid. I'd be quite surprised if he were involved in something like this.

 

My father, age 91 had memory tests last year. He had very severe day to day memory dysfunction that the tests just didn't pick up. The consultant thought my fathers intelligence and reading protected him from memory deterioration. My father read 2 or 3 novels a week, and used his samsung tablet to place bets on horses, using a very complicated betting system. But he couldn't keep himself safe day to day due to his memory impairment. The memory tests just didn't seem to relate to the dangerous level of memory dysfunction my father had.

 

Trial By Error: A New Study from Exeter on “Brain Training” for Treatment of Post-Covid Cognitive Problems

https://virology.ws/2024/04/10/tria...r-treatment-of-post-covid-cognitive-problems/

 

I find it very perplexing that a trial that started a while ago still has a frequently asked questions page that has no information and says "coming soon." What's up with that?? They're running a trial and can't be bothered to create a website that contains basic information for patients? That doesn't seem like a good sign to me.

 

It wasn't clear to me from the news report whether he was directly involved or whether this was a generic statement. It's a bit confusing.

 

https://www.medscape.co.uk/viewarticle/can-brain-training-ease-mental-fog-long-covid-2024a10006zx

 

Unless the muscle's already overused and exhausted, in which case it'll just end up hurting.