Author: David Tuller

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:…

Since 2008, the National Health Service (NHS) in England has been rolling out a program known as Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT). Initially focused on patients with mental health issues like depression and anxiety disorders, IAPT was then expanded to include those who are also simultaneously suffering from “long-term conditions” and so-called “medically unexplained…

In the UK, leading researchers are preparing to submit an application for a large genetic study to two major funding agencies. The project is being led by Professor Chris Ponting of the University of Edinburgh, who is also vice chair of the CFS/ME Research Collaborative, and the UK ME/CFS Biobank at the London School of…

It has been almost two years since BMC Psychology published a key reanalysis of raw data from the PACE trial. Given the significance of this paper (of which I was the least important of seven co-authors), I figured it wouldn’t hurt to highlight it again. The heroic Alem Matthees, a patient in Perth, Australia, succeeded…

Every year, Jennie Spotila deconstructs NIH funding on her Occupy M.E. blog. Last November 7, she crunched the numbers for the 2019 fiscal year, and the same day posted another blog with a more urgent message. I am re-posting that blog in full (a bit late), with Jennie’s permission. NIH Funding for ME Needs Life Support…

The Danish ME Association has sent and posted the following open letter to “Danish health politicians,” with a very impressive list of international signatories. It seemed important to give this letter wide circulation. (Note that footnotes 4 and 5 are linked to the names of two of the signatories, as in the original letter.) Open…

Last week I wrote a post on some of the signs used to diagnose people with “functional neurological disorder” (FND)–the phrase that has largely supplanted “conversion disorder” to describe neurological symptoms with no identified organic cause. In that post, I should have been clearer that I do not question whether people experience these symptoms. There…

My first exchange of views with the PACE authors involved the issue of case definition–the criteria used to identify the illness they  called chronic fatigue syndrome. This exchange took place courtesy of The New York Times, not long after The Lancet published the results of the PACE trial. In March, 2011, the Times ran a piece…

One of my goals next year is to write more about so-called “medically unexplained symptoms,” also known as MUS. The term MUS might be useful as a descriptive name for the large category of phenomena that lack a proven pathophysiological pathway. But in the medical literature, and in the minds of those who present themselves…

A new study in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research, posted December 16th, has reported that patients with chronic fatigue syndrome who experience major post-exertional malaise have a greater burden of psychological distress than those whose PEM is minimal or non-existent. Of course, this is not surprising. The sicker people are, with this or any illness,…