Trial By Error

Category: Syndicated

  • Study Finds “Elevated Brain Injury Markers and Reduced Grey Matter Volume” a Year After Hospitalization for COVID-19

    A British study of neurological sequelae in patients many months after hospitalization for COVID-19 has found that “post acute cognitive deficits…were associated with elevated brain injury markers in serum and reduced grey matter volume,” according to a pre-print posted earlier this week. (A pre-print is a paper that has not yet been peer-reviewed and published…

  • Dutch Study Links PEM in Long Covid to Biological Abnormalities

    A new study in Nature Communications, called “Muscle abnormalities worsen after post-exertional malaise in long COVID,” caused a stir after it was published last week. The investigators identified significant biological differences after an exercise challenge between long Covid (LC) patients with post-exertional malaise (PEM) and matched healthy controls who had recovered from acute bouts of…

  • An Interview with Journalist Ed Yong

    In the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, journalist Ed Yong played a key role in alerting the public to the wave of people suffering prolonged symptoms after an acute bout of COVID-19—the phenomenon that has come to be called long Covid. Yong, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coronavirus coverage in The Atlantic,…

  • An Interview with Journalist Ed Yong

    In the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, journalist Ed Yong played a key role in alerting the public to the wave of people suffering prolonged symptoms after an acute bout of COVID-19—the phenomenon that has come to be called long Covid. Yong, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coronavirus coverage in The Atlantic,…

  • Update on NICE Response to “Anomalies” Paper; Higher ME/CFS Population Estimates in CDC Survey

    In July, the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry published a “whine de coeur” called “Anomalies in the review process and interpretation of the evidence in the NICE guideline for chronic fatigue syndrome and myalgic encephalomyelitis.” The lead author was Professor Peter White, lead author of the discredited and arguably fraudulent PACE trial; he was…

  • Disastrous Results for Professor Crawley’s Pediatric Online CBT Trial

    Pediatrician Esther Crawley, Bristol University’s methodologically and factually challenged grant magnet, has released what seem to be the first outcome results from her much-hyped but fatally flawed FITNET-NHS trial—and they are disastrous. The trial, a pediatric study of online CBT based on similar Dutch research that (falsely) claimed to have proven the effectiveness of the…

  • Julie Rehmeyer on the Heartbreaking Loss of Beth Mazur

    Beth Mazur was a long-time ME advocate and a co-founder of #MEAction. ME-world was shocked to learn on Friday–two days ago–that she was gone, at the unconscionably young age of 47. At the time, she was visiting New Mexico and Julie Rehmeyer, another patient and advocate. Words often fail at times like this. But Julie…

  • Betsy Ladyzhets on New HHS Funding for Long Covid Clinics

    Investigative journalist Betsy Ladyzhets is a co-founder of The Sick Times, a new online publication covering long Covid and related disorders. Last week, she wrote about a new grant program for long Covid clinics from the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), part of the Department of Health and Human Services. Here’s the…

  • #MEAction’s Jaime Seltzer on Recent NIH Gathering

    Last Tuesday and Wednesday (December 12th and 13th), the US National Institutes of Health–and, specifically, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases–held a two-day meeting called “Advancing ME/CFS Research: Identifying Targets for Intervention and Learning from Long COVID.” In 2019, I’d physically attended a similar NIH gathering; this time, I caught many of the…

  • Update on Our Letter Concerning the Prevalence of Functional Neurological Disorder

    In August, I submitted a letter to NeuroImage: Clinical concerning inflated rates of prevalence of functional neurological disorder, on behalf of myself and nine colleagues. After the letter went through peer review and a round of revisions, I was informed in early November that it had been accepted, as I noted in a blog post.…

  • Dutch Survey Respondents Rate GET/CBT as “the Worst” Approach, Per New Report

    A survey of more than 1500 patients in the Netherlands with a diagnosis of ME, CFS or ME/CFS rated graded exercise therapy as “the worst” interventions, according to an article on the site of the ME and Disability Support Group, while “explanation and advice about the importance of lying down to prevent worsening of complaints,…

  • NHS Lacks Policy on Severe ME, Per Testimony in Pre-Inquest Hearing on Death of Maeve Boothby O’Neill

    In January, I wrote a piece for Codastory.com about Maeve Boothby O’Neill, a young woman from Devon, England, who died from ME-related complications in October, 2021, at the age of 27. This week, at a pre-inquest hearing, it was revealed that the medical director of the hospital involved in Maeve’s care declared in a written…