CDC CFS Research Study Questioned

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CDC CFS Research Study Questioned

June 29, 2007 Health News

PR Leap (press release) - Chula Vista,CA*

http://www.prleap.com/pr/83674/

(PRLEAP.COM) LONDON, 29 June 2007 / International health advocacy

pressure group One Click has applied to the Centers for Disease

Control, Atlanta for key data under the Freedom of Information Act

in relation to the new Chronic Fatigue Syndrome study published on 8

June 2007. The epidemiological research study carried out by

Reeves of the CDC et al in Population Health Metrics 2007, 5:5

doi:10.1186/1478-7954-5-5 and entitled `Prevalence of chronic

fatigue syndrome in metropolitan, urban, and rural Georgia' has led

to academic unease due to the authors' refusal to reference or

sufficiently describe the method they used to compute their results.

Science has a system for reporting research results. If researchers

use a previously established methodology, they need to cite

previously published reports that describe the method in detail so

that interested readers can thoroughly understand how the current

study was performed and be able to replicate it if they so desire.

Professor Leonard A. Ph.D., De University writes in

his `Problems with the New CDC CFS Prevalence Estimates'

paper: " Accurate measurement and classification of CFS, FMS and IBS

is imperative when evaluating the diagnostic validity of

controversial disease entities alternatively labelled `functional

somatic syndromes'. Measurement that fails to capture the unique

characteristics of these illnesses might inaccurately conclude that

only distress and unwellness characterize these illnesses, thus

inappropriately supporting a unitary hypothetical construct called

functional somatic syndromes. Most importantly, the erroneous

inclusion of people with primary psychiatric conditions in CFS

samples will have detrimental consequences for the interpretation of

both epidemiologic and treatment efficacy findings. "

" Epidemiological studies have a troubled history, " comments Jane

, One Click Group director. " Used by the tobacco industry to

show that smoking didn't cause lung cancer in the 1940's, such

studies are easily flawed and the numbers manipulated. The authors

of this CFS study need to publish the equations and values used so

that any reader is able to compute the results. Without this

information, the reader can only guess whether the researchers used

a legitimate method and that their arithmetic was accurate. Results

that cannot be justified cannot be relied on. "

FOIA information requests take twenty working days to process.

Contact:

The One Click Group

Email: mail@...

Website: www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk