Edit: I may have misinterpreted the study in this post, as I just can't make sense of it. Perhaps it would make more sense if I read it again, in careful detail, but I'm not inclined to.
I think this study is very poor, for many reasons. And some of its meaning/context has apparently being lost in translation, and much of the methodology has been omitted.
It is a retrospective study, so its results must be considered exploratory/indicative, rather than an exact science.
There doesn't seem to have been a protocol for the study, and if there was, then the methodology was changed anyway.
The methodology isn't clear, either for the statistical analysis or for prescribing of treatments (e.g. what were they? why were they prescribed? what dosages? etc.) or for how/why the patients were selected.
Their most basic stats don't actually make sense. In Table III, the percentages in the 'overall response' box, don't make any sense to me. I think they've made a major error with their percentages, unless I'm missing something. e.g. For the 15.3% positive outcome for antiviral/immunoglobulin treatment, what does the percentage refer to? If 93 participants received antiviral/immunoglobulin treatment, and 69 had a positive outcome, then that's a 74% positive outcome. If 69 had a positive outcome out of a total of 741 participants, then that's 9.3%. And why are there more participants included in Table III than there were supposed to be for the study? Actually, the percentages in Table III seem to be worked out in terms of the percentage of the overall 'no' response, and the percentage or the overall 'yes' response. This is utter nonsense. It's basic infant-level stats that they've got utterly wrong. (Unless I'm missing something, which is possible.)
It doesn't give much hope for the rest of the study, especially as they've mis-interpreted their own mistakes in the body of the text.
It's not clear if the supplements were given to every participant. It seems that they might have given in combination with the other treatments. If they were given in combination, then the supplement group would have worked as a comparison group. (i.e. not quite a control group, but a useful comparison.) But it's not explicitly stated that every patient received supplements.
Translation issue: In Table III, it's not clear what 'no' for an overall response refers to: The wider text seem to hint that it's a negative response, but Table III suggests that it refers to a non-response or a negative response.
I'm unable to interpret the details in Table III re 'univariate analysis' and p-values etc. But there doesn't seem much point, considering the mistakes in the basis stats. In theory, they would tell us if the patients who experienced improvement after antiviral/immunoglobulin, experienced particularly useful or significant effects.
If we look at the numbers rather than the percentages, in Table III, then it does perhaps suggest that both antiviral/immunoglobulin treatment and Corticosteroids steroids are worthy of further investigation. (Whichever meds they used.)
Here are the percentages, as I think they should have been reported:
Supplements alone
positive response 134 (56%)
No response or negative response 107 (44%)
Corticosteroids
positive response 203 (62%)
No response or negative response 126 (38%)
Antidepressant/sedative
positive response 45 (58%)
No response or negative response 33 (42%)
Antiviral/immunoglobulin
positive response 69 (74%)
No response or negative response 24 (26%)
In terms of positive responders, for antiviral/immunoglobulin treatment, there is an 18% percentage point increase when compared to supplements alone.
In terms of no response and negative responders, for antiviral/immunoglobulin treatment, there is also an 18 percentage point improvement when compared to supplements alone.
These seem like good results, but the weaknesses of the study, and the methodological omissions, need to taken into account. I'm not sure if these are legitimate comparisons, because I don't understand the methodology.
I'm not sure if the patients selected were a subset of CFS patients (i.e. patients with viral onset, or viral issues.) If so, then the results cannot be extrapolated to the wider community, but are useful for whatever cohort they used.
At the most, this study could be used as guide to future proper trials of these treatments. The suggestion is that antivirals/immunoglobulin (whichever specific drugs they used) maybe slightly protective and perhaps increase rates of improvement when compared to supplements alone.
Corticosteroids were perhaps better than supplements alone, but perhaps not significantly.