A preliminary prospective study of nutritional, psychological and combined therapies for me/cfs

[taniaaust1]

and 72 participants completed the battery of measures at follow-up (52.17% response rate;

As more then double the amount of the psychology group dropped out compared to the other 2 groups (that sure says there was many unhappy patients with that therapy), and that all different groups total response rate was added together. I would have to assume that this makes the psychological group sound even better then it was when they say 52.17% rate for the groups.

Are they really that desperate now to make the psychology treatment look better then it is by now mixing its results in with other things including supplements?

I cant believe how studies with no control groups etc.. get so easily accepted into the medical journals. There is definately a biased thing going on towards psych studies being easily accepted. (we know with biopsychological CFS studies.. they get a far harder time with reviews.. where the reviewers of psych CFS studies seem to be usually have postive biased towards what they are reviewing).

Also there needs to be a standard put in place on what they are calling CFS in studies cause right now.. anything including someone with just fatigue can be called CFS and the journals will publish.

 

[seanpaul]

in the Review of this Article - Dr Price Oxford Psychiatrist even states he is 'prejudiced towards studies on this kind' but even he questioned some of the results, but didnt dismiss the very poor quality of this article - like Does anyone in the study actually have ME/CFS would have been the first question to ask?

 

[Dolphin]

Keith - can you make any sense of the percentiles in the Results tables?

Jenny

I presume they are from the interquartile ranges (25th and 75th percentile along with median, 50th percentile).

 

[Dolphin]

An earlier draft is at:
http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/6/e001079.draft-revisions.pdf

It includes means which makes comparisons easier with a lot of other data.
It also puts the data for the three interventions next to each other so its easier to spot numerical differences.

 

[Dolphin]

I was very annoyed by this paper - there was no screening to see if the people they were treating actually had ME/CFS - yet this paper promotes the idea thats its treating ME/CFS - the reviewers didnt pick up on this, not surprising given it was Dr. Crawley of Bristol and Dr. Price and Psychiatrist from Oxford - both fans of the psycho-approach to ME/CFS treatment. From what I see papers liked this get published easily while conflicting papers are blocked.

Out of the two reviewers, I thought E. Crawley showed any more signs of bias/possible bias.