PERCEIVE study (GET for Long Covid): Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Australia

The announcement of this study caused a firestorm on Twitter and continues to do so:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1626538563247525889


With the exception of a "clever" acronym, nothing adds more to the credibility of a clinical trial than announcing "promising results" before it has even finished:

Amid all the self-serving puffery and psuedoscientific babble there is one disclaimer:

Of course, there's no mention of PEM, ME/CFS or whether the allegedly improved patients have been able to return to work.


ETA: the story mentions this is a "pilot study". I wonder if they couldn't get enough participants for a full trial?

 

Am I reading that right, a quarter of participants improved their exercise capacity by 15%? And that's thrilling?

 

I watched the TV coverage and interview with the leading investigator twice to make sure I hadn't misheard that underwhelming 15% improvement figure.

The reporter said, "People with long covid can do more exercise than they think they can. They just don't feel too good afterwards."

 

Which demonstrates to me that everyone involved in this study does not know anything about PEM.

 

For reference, Clinical Trials listing, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04983823

 

At least the study is running for two years.

 

Newsflash, if I choose not to exercise because I need to do paperwork, socialize, shop, or do my basic ADLs in the 2-3 days afterwards, I'm not able to exercise.

 

Researchers are saying that reinfections of COVID, including asymptomatic + patients can develop multiple organ damage in the future.

 

Perceive, how Orwellian.

Marketing the study while it's ongoing, and showing pathetic "benefits", that 15% is definitely something to sneeze at, now that's peak evidence-based medicine. It really is all about perception, just not the patients'.

The researchers are clearly showing they understand nothing of the issues, did not bother listening to the patients and went in with all biases possible. The description about how it relates to brain fog is just ridiculous, they are trying to fit in concepts they just learned about in ways that they think is what the patients are saying, but since they don't listen to a damn word patients tell them they're wrong about that.

They're stuck at reduced exercise capacity, clearly did not hear a single word from the patients talking about even minor exertion. They think that 15% improved capacity means something but they don't even know about PEM.

Pathetic. It's getting so hard for me to respect medical professionals at this point. It's not a personal thing, it's the profession that is clearly in a state of crisis, having reached the limits that ego-driven medicine can deliver a long time ago.

It still remains that the only parts of medicine that are good are based on science. This is not science, it's pseudoscience marketing. The parts that aren't any good are not based on science. This is very simple to understand, it's almost a mathematical formula: science = useful + good, not science = not useful and bad.