Trial By Error

Tag: Long Covid

  • Letter to BMJ Seeking Correction in Study of Long Covid Physical-and-Mental Rehabilitation Program

    Last month, The BMJ published a study of a rehab intervention for Long Covid in which the authors made claims that were not borne out by the data. The study was called “Clinical effectiveness of an online supervised group physical and mental health rehabilitation programme for adults with post-covid-19 condition (REGAIN study): multicentre randomised controlled…

  • Debate Over Recent Citation of Arguably Fraudulent PACE Trial

    Having a discussion about the PACE trial with someone who still maintains it was a well-conducted study is like debating the 2020 election with a Trumper who insists that Biden lost. These two distinct groups exhibit the same remarkable inability or willful refusal to understand and accept reality, whether it involves basic scientific constructs or…

  • Interview with Dr Rob Wüst about New Study of Muscle Abnormalities in Long Covid

    In early January, Nature Communications published a Dutch study called “Muscle abnormalities worsen after post-exertional malaise in long COVID.” The study caused a buzz among patients, clinicians, and other researchers and generated extensive news coverage. Called. (I wrote a blog post about it here.) The investigators identified significant biological differences after an exercise challenge between…

  • Reporter Betsy Ladyzhets on Last Week’s US Senate Hearing

    Last Thursday (January 18th), the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions held a hearing called “Addressing Long COVID: Advancing Research and Improving Patient Care.” The bipartisan panel included senators who are also physicians and as well as Democrat Tim Kaine of Virginia, who has been open about his own struggles with prolonged symptoms…

  • 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 (A pre-print is a paper that has not yet been peer-reviewed and published…

  • 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,…

  • Interview with Founders of The Sick Times, a New Online Publication

    Earlier this month, Betsy Ladyzhets and Miles Griffis, two smart, young American journalists, announced the launch The Sick Times, an online publication focused on long Covid and related post-acute infection syndromes, including ME/CFS. I have met both of them in the last couple of years and have been impressed with their work covering the pandemic,…

  • David Putrino on New Nature Study of Long Covid Immune Profiling

    I’ve posted two past interviews with David Putrino (here and here) about long Covid, ME/CFS, and related issues. Dr Putrino, a neuroscientist and physical therapist, is director of rehabilitation innovation at the Mt Sinai Health System in New York. Early in the pandemic, he began seeing patients with prolonged symptoms following acute bouts of Covid-19.…

  • An Interview with Yale’s Akiko Iwasaki

    Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology at the Yale School of Medicine, is a leading investigator into long Covid and has recently been tapped to lead a new Center for Infection & Immunity. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2018, the National Academy of Medicine in 2019, to and the American…

  • More on the Perplexing Dutch Claim that Null Results for Objective Measures of Physical Activity Are Irrelevant to Fatigue

    I recently wrote about a Dutch study published a few months ago in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases–“Efficacy of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Targeting Severe Fatigue Following Coronavirus Disease 2019: Results of a Randomized Controlled Trial.” The study, nick-named ReCOVer, found that unblinded trials relying on subjective outcomes will produce modestly positive reports in the group receiving…

  • Dutch Team Offers “Dog-Ate-My-Data” Excuses for Not Reporting Null Objective Findings

    Two months ago, Clinical Infectious Diseases (CID), a high-impact journal, published a study called “Efficacy of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Targeting Severe Fatigue Following Coronavirus Disease 2019: Results of a Randomized Controlled Trial.” The study, nicknamed ReCOVer amd conducted in the Netherlands, purported to provide the “first evidence for the positive effect of CBT in patients with…