The BMJ reports on the latest study from the PACE trial published on 13 January in the Lancet Psychiatry, with an article by Ingrid Torjesen. A number of letters in response challenging the research conclusions have been published online including those by:

Prof Jonathan CW Edwards (Universty College London) 18 January: “an unblinded trial such as PACE is simply uninterpretable. It does not provide useful information on which to base clinical protocols.”

Carolyn E Wilshire (School of Psychology, University of Wellington, New Zealand) 19 January:  “the current PACE study and its predecessor, have not consistently been evaluated by these [agreed quality] standards, which has sometimes led to exaggerated claims as to their effectiveness.”

Tom Kindlon (Irish ME/CFS Association) 18 January: Objective measures found a lack of improvement for CBT & GET in the PACE Trial: subjective improvements may simply represent response biases or placebo effects in this non-blinded trial

Dr William RC Weir (Consultant Physician) 20 January: “This paradigm [exercise phobia] has no plausible scientific basis and can only be described as a doctrine whose adherents continue to ignore the biomedical evidence which amply confirms the organic basis of the condition.”

Dr Charles Shephard (Doctor, MEA) 16 January: Conclusions about graded exercise fail to recognise the complexities of ME/CFS.

Greg Crowhurst (nurse, carer) & Simon Lawrence 22 January: Rightly outraged by the latest in a long line of misrepresentative articles suggesting that their disease is a fatigue condition.

These, and other letters can be read at the BMJ online