The Solve ME/CFS Initiative (SMCI) hosted a webinar December 15 in which Zaher Nahle, PhD, MPA, summarized research in which they are participating or supporting. Nahle is the Vice President for Research and Scientific Programs at SMCI. Nahle began by listing the problems associated with ME’s perception, funding, and research. “The mother lode of our
Note: This is the final part of our series on education in ME/CFS. To start reading at the first article in this series, Top Medical Schools Teach Little About ME/CFS, click here. Finding a physician with knowledge of ME can be challenging, but practitioners of three branches of alternative medicine may have learned about this
One of the frequent complaints of patients, researchers, and policymakers about ME research is that the findings are scattered, and the studies, small. One group will discover X is elevated in 20 ME patients, only to find that when the test is done on another 13 patients two years down the line, they don’t show
Momentum continues from the #MillionsMissing campaign that was born last May. Activists took to the streets worldwide in 11 cities in May – and in 25 cities in September – to protest their government’s neglect of people with ME. While the posters are now stored away, activism has continued behind the scenes in follow-up
#MillionsMissing Holland has made its voice heard in the House of Representatives. House of Representatives member Linda Voortman has filed questions about ME based on the protest demands with Holland’s Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport, Edith Schippers. In the letter, Voortman asks the minister of health if she is willing to provide more
When a grant proposal is submitted, a panel of experts will examine it for merit before making a final decision. But what happens when those ‘experts’ deny the very existence of the disease they purport to study? Memorably, a recent grant proposal was submitted to Canada’s CIHR (Canadian Institutes of Health Research) to study ME/CFS,
#MEAction Network UK’s statement denouncing CBT as a form of treatment for ME has been published in the January edition of Positive Health Online today. The letter was sent in response to FITNET, a controversial study that purported children and young people with ME could be successfully treated through CBT conducted over the internet. Esther
Do people really recover as a result of CBT and graded exercise? Sadly not, says a new analysis of PACE People with ME/CFS dream of recovery — of getting their health and lives back. So the results published by the PACE trial, showing that 22% of participants recovered after just 12 months of CBT or
From the Solve ME/CFS Initiative: We recently highlighted a paper published online on October 17, 2016 (doi: 10.1038/ng.3696) the journal Nature Genetics, one of the most rigorous publications in the field of genetics with tantalizing findings. The paper, titled “Elevated basal serum tryptase identifies a multisystem disorder associated with increased TPSAB1 copy number,” had two key features that could be potentially relevant to ME/CFS:
#MEAction recently interviewed Dr. Michael VanElzakker regarding two, new studies on ME/CFS. The first aims to discover evidence of increased activity where the sensory vagus nerve enters the brainstem – a subtle effect that requires some intricate scans. In order to measure the activity in the vagus nerve, Dr. VanElzakker will use a scanner that
