by tonybritton on February 18, 2011:
“Results are at serious variance to patient evidence on both cognitive therapy and exercise therapy”
This is the response from The ME Association to the results of the PACE trial, which were published in The Lancet on Friday 18 February 2011
An abstract of the paper can be found here: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(11)60096-2/fulltext
The Lancet press release can be found here: http://www.meassociation.org.uk/?p=4621
The MEA will be producing a more academic response to The Lancet in due course.
All of the comments below can, if preferred, be placed as quotes from Dr Charles Shepherd, Hon Medical Adviser.
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Headline comments from Dr Charles Shepherd, Hon Medical Adviser at the MEA:
“The largest ever clinical trial into the effects of CBT, GET and adaptive pacing therapy (APT) has produced results that are clearly at serious variance from those reported by the largest ever survey of patient opinion on these forms of treatment.
We find the trial results extremely worrying because pacing, in the form that the MEA recommends, may as a result be no longer be offered as a treatment option in NHS clinics. And at the same time, NICE may well strengthen its inflexible and unhelpful recommendations regarding CBT and GET.
We also fear that the way in which the results are already being reported in media headlines – eg Got ME? Just get out and exercise, say scientists – will lead some doctors to advise inappropriate exercise regimes that will cause a serious relapse.
This is not a good day for people with ME/CFS.
They have a complex multisystem illness that requires a range of treatment options based on their individual symptoms as well as the stage and severity of their illness” Read more>>
1 comment:
The authors of this PACE trial are not just intellectually dishonest, they are morally reprehensible.
By using up the precious little funding available for CFS/ME research on this PACE "psychobabble plus exercise" nonsense, these psychiatrists are not only unforgivably letting down millions of people with CFS/ME, but also, this waste of funds significantly hinders proper scientific biomedical research into finding a cure for CFS/ME.
CFS/ME is not only a terrible disease, it also costs the US economy alone an estimated $25 billion a year, due to lost work hours and medical care costs.
Yes, that's right: every year that CFS/ME ignored by the science funding bodies, and we get this "Mickey Mouse" science from psychiatrists instead, it costs the US economy $25 billion (and the global economic costs of CSF/ME are clearly even higher).
What other serious disease would have something so intellectually backwards as "exercise therapy". It is a complete joke. You spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to show what? That a bit of walking may (or may not) help some CFS/ME patients! Wow, what rocket science! Einstein eat your heart out!
If this PACE research were a 10th grade school science project for 15 year olds, it would be fine; but it is embarrassing to humanity to see it published in serious scientific journals like the Lancet.
Most psychiatrists and psychologists that purportedly research CFS/ME have little or no understanding of the complex biochemical, immunological and neurological aberrations that are usually found in CFS/ME patients. So why on Earth are these psychiatrists meddling in a field about which they know next to nothing?!
CFS/ME research needs highly intelligent minds, not second-rate psychiatric psychobabble.
Science funding bodies take note now: your lack of interest in proper biomedical research into CFS/ME is costing the US $25 billion a year. You need to be held accountable for this.
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