Multidisciplinary rehabilitation treatment is not effective for ME/CFS : A review of the FatiGo trial

Review of the FatiGo trial (Vos-Vromans), one of the 13 pieces of evidence NICE will review. FatiGo, a trial with many problems including ignoring its own results.

Mark Vink, Alexandra Vink-Niese,

First Published August 6, 2018 Review Article 

Abstract

The FatiGo trial concluded that multidisciplinary rehabilitation treatment is more effective for chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis in the long term than cognitive behaviour therapy and that multidisciplinary rehabilitation treatment is more cost-effective for fatigue and cognitive behaviour therapy for quality of life. However, FatiGo suffered from a number of serious methodological flaws. Moreover, it ignored the results of the activity metre, its only objective outcome. This jeopardizes the validity of FatiGo. Its analysis shows that there was no statistically significant difference between multidisciplinary rehabilitation treatment and cognitive behaviour therapy and neither are (cost-)effective. FatiGo’s claims of efficacy of multidisciplinary rehabilitation treatment and cognitive behaviour therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis are misleading and not justified by their results.

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