Evaluation of aspects of Optimum Health Clinic treatment programme

[Jenny]

A couple of years ago, I was a participant in a treatment trial run by researchers affiliated to the Optimum Health Clinic in the UK. I was in the experimental group, and was asked to do their various mindfulness-type exercises for at least half an hour a day for 8 weeks. I actually scored worse on most of their outcome measures (eg CDC CFS Symptom Inventory) at the end of the 8 weeks. (Nothing to with the programme, I'm sure, just consistent with my randomly fluctuating pattern of symptoms over 30 years or so!)

So I was interested to read a report of this study (in an open-access US psychology journal that charges authors to have their research published).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4159366/

Unsurprisingly, the paper reports no post-treatment improvements in ME symptoms as measured by the various total scale scores. The only ME symptom that was reported to have improved was sleeping problems. But this was measured using just one item (not an acceptable method in studies using self-report instruments).

 

[Esther12]

Would like to see the peer review comments for that, but it looks like they're not made public.

 

[barbc56]

@Jenny

You bring up an important point related to studies on me/cfs patients as well as other condtions where symptoms fluctuate. Because of this inherent waxing and waning the measurements of variables may also fluctuate which in turn may impact the validity of a study's conclusions. .

I would think studies that measure variables over time might improve this problem.

I'm also not surprised at the outcome of the study and wonder if the affect of improving sleep lasts over time.

I need to go back and check if they did any follow up.

Thanks

Barb