Year: 2020

When I was in Australia two years ago–wow, can’t believe it’s been that long!–I spent some time with Dr Mark Guthridge, an associate professor of biomedical science at Deakin University in Melbourne. Several years ago, after a bout of mononucleosis/glandular fever, he developed myalgic encephalomyelitis, which in Australia even patients and specialist doctors generally call…

Last week, I wrote to Rob Paull, the co-founder and CEO of Mahana Therapeutics, regarding the company’s misleading claims about the web-based cognitive behavior therapy program for irritable bowel syndrome it recently licensed from King’s College London. I have also written to Professor Rona Moss-Morris, the co-lead investigator of ACTIB, the study that road-tested the…

Venture capitalist Robert Paull is listed on the Mahana Therapeutics website as the company’s co-founder and CEO. I have no idea how he got involved with this group of UK researchers and King’s College London. Given my own experiences, I would certainly have advised him against getting in bed with them, had he asked me–which…

I’ll soon post a blog on why I’m spending so much time on this IBS issue when I’m supposed to be focused on ME (or CFS, ME/CFS, CFS/ME, or whatever term is being used to refer to this illness or cluster of related illnesses). In the meantime, here’s a copy of the letter I sent…

Ten days ago, I sent a letter to Professor Rona Moss-Morris of King’s College London, seeking information about the licensing deal involving her web-based program of cognitive behavior therapy to treat irritable bowel syndrome. Since I have not heard back, this morning I made a second attempt to reach out to her and obtain some…

On its website, Mahana Therapeutics has listed sixteen gastroenterology and psychology advisors from prominent academic and medical institutions. Companies often add such names to their rosters as a way of signaling their significance and their access to great minds. Sometimes these people are compensated; sometimes not. In many instances, these advisors play little role in day-to-day company…

Last week I wrote about the recently announced licensing deal between Mahana Therapeutics and King’s College London. The deal involves a web-based course of cognitive behavior therapy designed to treat irritable bowel syndrome. In a major study, the reported improvements in symptoms among participants in the web-based program were modest at best. Yet Mahana is…

As I wrote yesterday, Mahana Therapeutics has recently licensed from King’s College London an “innovative digital therapeutic”—a web-based program delivering a course of cognitive behavioral therapy to patients with irritable bowel syndrome. A page on the Mahana site promoting this web-delivered IBS-CBT program furthers the impression that this deal is steeped mostly in hype. A…

Yesterday I sent a freedom-of-information request to King’s College London about the recently announced licensing deal it has with Mahana Therapeutics. The deal involves a web-based CBT program for irritable bowel syndrome, which I have written about here and here. This morning I sent a note to the e-mail address for press contact listed on…

On January 10th, the following information was announced in a press release: Mahana Therapeutics, a digital therapeutics company reimagining the treatment of chronic diseases, today announced that the Company has entered into a licensing and collaboration agreement with King’s College London, a leading research university and one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in…

Had things gone as planned, the PACE trial should have been able to serve as proof that so-called medically unexplained symptoms (MUS)—in this case what the investigators referred to as chronic fatigue syndrome–could be successfully treated with psychological and behavioral therapies. The Lancet published the first PACE results, which reported benefits from cognitive behavioural therapy…

Last October, I gave a talk in Oxford (not AT Oxford) about the dung-heap known as the Lightning Process trial which was published in 2017 in Archives of Disease in Childhood, a BMJ journal. The study’s full name: “Clinical and cost-effectiveness of the Lightning Process in addition to specialist medical care for paediatric chronic fatigue syndrome:…