Month: September 2025
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My Letter to Cochrane’s Chief Executive Officer
The other day, I posted yet another blog about Cochrane’s deeply flawed 2019 review of exercise therapy for what it called chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), and the organization’s decision last December to abandon a planned update. Specifically, I was commenting on a response from the review’s lead author, Lillebeth Larun, to a comment from the…
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Cochrane CFS/ME Exercise Review “May Not Apply” to Patients Diagnosed with Newer ME/CFS Definitions, Per Lead Author
It’s hard to keep up with everything going on in this field these days. So I missed the fact that Lillebeth Larun, the lead author behind the deeply flawed Cochrane review of exercise therapies for what the organization then called “CFS/ME,” has concocted yet another unconvincing defense of her work. (Larun is a researcher and…
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“Mass Psychogenic Illness” at Heathrow Airport–NOT!
On Monday afternoon, a bunch of people in Terminal 4 at Heathrow, London’s biggest airport, reported feeling ill. The reports led to concerns about a possible toxic exposure, which triggered an evacuation and major flight delays. An initial search for dangerous substances found nothing. On Tuesday, The Guardian ran an article under the following headline:…
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Interview with Columbia’s Ian Lipkin on Heightened Immune Response in ME/CFS, Funding Challenges, and Current Research
Last week, a research team from Columbia University’s Center for Infection and Immunity published a paper called “Heightened innate immunity may trigger chronic inflammation, fatigue and post-exertional malaise in ME/CFS,” in the journal npj Metabolic Health and Disease. The senior investigator, Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, is director of the center and a professor of epidemiology…
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Australian Investigators Blame ME/CFS Patient Advocates for Poor Recruitment in “Active Video Gaming” Trial
In a new paper, a team of investigators from the University of South Australia in Adelaide, Australia, describes a “pilot feasibility” trial for an ME/CFS intervention focused on physical activity. The trial fell dramatically short on recruitment efforts—a failure that the investigators appear to explicitly blame on the patient community rather than any possible shortcomings…