The conclusion of a BMJ article by Tom Kindlon about the media publicity given to the latest analysis of the PACE Trial suggests - “Probably the main contribution of the PACE Trial has been to add to a growing body of evidence that while CBT and GET for CFS have resulted in some changes on subjective measures, they havent lead to improvements on objective measures.” This reminds me of the 25 year follow up study by Leonard Jason, David Bell et all with the children in the Lyndonville outbreak, which considered some of the complexities of assessing improvement and recovery. They found that: “Individuals with CFS who have been ill for longer periods of time may utilize more adaptive coping skills (Brown, Brown, & Jason, 2010), thus facilitating the process of illness adaptation (Samson & Siam, 2008). However, illness adaptation may create difficulty in interpreting the meaning of recovery from CFS. For example, in Bell et al.’s (2001) study, 80% of the children and adolescents who became ill considered themselves “well” at follow-up. However, of those 80%, half had ongoing somatic symptoms, while the other half had minimal or no somatic symptoms. Some patients may perceive themselves as feeling well if their symptoms continue but perhaps not as severely as when their illness began. Rather shockingly - “individuals who were diagnosed with CFS as adolescents 25 years ago, and now report no longer having a diagnosis, show similar levels of impairment as individuals diagnosed with CFS adolescents 25 years ago and now report maintaining the diagnosis of CFS.” There is a comment byProf Jonathan Edwards, on the PACE publicity, at bmj/content/350/bmj.h227/rr-9
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 10:29:38 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015