StatPearls: Continuing Education Activity: Chronic fatigue syndrome

Stat Pearls describes itself as
The Largest Library of Medical Education in the World.

https://www.statpearls.com/home/index

https://www.statpearls.com/ArticleLibrary/viewarticle/21640

 

That is outrageous. None of the references appear to be later than 2012 (a quick glance). Edit, seen one from 2017, British Journal of Pharmacology.

There is so much disinformation on 'treatment' for ME or CFS in so many supposedly authoritative publications. It looks like a lifetime's task getting it all updated. In the meantime doctors and students are absorbing outdated damaging misinformation.

 

GET and CBT. How are we still not past this. Unbelievable.

 

It certainly looks that way. I sent them a polite message explaining, in a few lines, the controversy surrounding the PACE trial and the limitations of CBT for MECFS. I received a response stating they will consider revising the article.

 

I checked back on the article; it's still peppered with BPS lingo and theorem. The passages quoted by @Sly Saint above are unchanged. However I note its new inclusion of two sentences:

Regarding the PACE trial:

And concerning CBT and GET in general:

Should we wish to address the article's general tenor, I think a more concerted approach is needed. Since that's beyond the scope of my energy limits I hope others on this forum can pick up the slack and raise the issue(s) with StatPearls

 

Statpearls is a private US based company. As far as I can see the business model is selling the Statspearls materials via its corporate access https://www.statpearls.com/home/groupsales/ which is then sold on as courses via the Statspearls website. The institutional base seems to be mostly if not all US based and I think we have to expect that Statpearls' preferred references will be moderated by the interests of its institutional customers so if there's lots of therapy to sell, it's unlikely Statpearls is going to downplay the role of therapy (CBT etc) in treating a condition.

If there's any movement to be had I think it's going to be from referencing publications by the CDC and IOP. The difficulty is going to be that Statpearls probably has little incentive to change what looks like a strongly sciency article which can serve as a tick sheet for 'learning'.