ReviewHealthcare (Basel, Switzerland)2022
Is It Useful to Question the Recovery Behaviour of Patients with ME/CFS or Long COVID?
Review in Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland), 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 27 citations in OpenAlex.
- Brief Outpatient Rehabilitation Program for Post-COVID-19 Condition: A Randomized Clinical Trial.JAMA network open · 2024Trial
- The PACE Trial's GET Manual for Therapists Exposes the Fixed Incremental Nature of Graded Exercise Therapy for ME/CFS.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Design and validation of an energy level diary for fatigue management in patients with post-COVID syndrome.Frontiers in rehabilitation sciences · 2025Article
- [What Medical Specialties do ME/CFS Sufferers Consult? A Public Health Study on the need for Better Medical Education and Training].Gesundheitswesen (Bundesverband der Arzte des Offentlichen Gesundheitsdienstes (Germany)) · 2024Article
- Safety and Efficacy of Pulmonary Rehabilitation for Long COVID Patients Experiencing Long-Lasting Symptoms.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Article
- [Systems thinking, subjective findings and diagnostic "pigeonholing" in ME/CFS: A mainly qualitative public health study from a patient perspective].Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift (1946) · 2024Article
- The relevance of pacing strategies in managing symptoms of post-COVID-19 syndrome.Journal of translational medicine · 2023Article
- Digital Interventions for Treating Post-COVID or Long-COVID Symptoms: Scoping Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Article
- Patients' Post-/Long-COVID Symptoms, Vaccination and Functional Status-Findings from a State-Wide Online Screening Study.Vaccines · 2023Article
- Long COVID: major findings, mechanisms and recommendations.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2023Review
- The Draft Report by the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Healthcare Does Not Provide Any Evidence That Graded Exercise Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Are Safe and Effective Treatments for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.Diseases (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Long COVID as a functional somatic symptom disorder caused by abnormally precise prior expectations during Bayesian perceptual processing: A new hypothesis and implications for pandemic response.SAGE open medicine · 2023Review
- The Updated NICE Guidance Exposed the Serious Flaws in CBT and Graded Exercise Therapy Trials for ME/CFS.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
For the last few decades, medical guidelines have recommended treating patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) with graded exercise therapy (GET) and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Moreover, doctors have questioned the recovery behaviour of these patients and stimulated them to follow these treatments so that they would be able to go back to work. In this article, we reviewed trials of GET and CBT for ME/CFS that reported on work status before and after treatment to answer the question of whether doctors should continue to question the recovery behaviour of patients with ME/CFS. Our review shows that more patients are unable to work after treatment than before treatment with CBT and GET. It also highlights the fact that both treatments are unsafe for patients with ME/CFS. Therefore, questioning the recovery behaviour of patients with ME/CFS is pointless. This confirms the conclusion from the British National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), which has recently published its updated ME/CFS guideline and concluded that CBT and GET are not effective and do not lead to recovery. Studies on CBT and GET for long COVID have not yet been published. However, this review offers no support for their use in improving the recovery of patients with an ME/CFS-like illness after infection with COVID-19, nor does it lend any support to the practice of questioning the recovery behaviour of these patients.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.