Comment in: Graded exercise for chronic fatigue syndrome: too soon to dismiss reports of adverse reactions. [J Rehabil Med. 2010]
Comment on: Chronic fatigue syndrome: an approach combining self-management with graded exercise to avoid exacerbations. [J Rehabil Med. 2008]
Sir, We read with interest the special report by Nijs et al. (1), entitled “Chronic fatigue syndrome: an approach combining self-management with graded exercise to avoid exacerbations”. The paper proposes to provide an integrated model for graded exercise therapy (GET) in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).
The authors state that current GET programmes for people with CFS exacerbate symptoms. This is a familiar and mistaken criticism of GET, often quoted from the 2001 Action for myaligic encephalomyelitis (ME) (AfME) survey, which reported that 50% of patients with CFS/ME who received graded exercise felt worse (2). A follow-up survey reported that, in many cases, exercise was being undertaken independently, without the supervision of a therapist trained to deliver GET to patients with CFS (3). In other words, it was not GET.
You can read the rest of this comment here: https://www.medicaljournals.se/jrm/content/abstract/10.2340/16501977-0261
Source: Clark LV, White PD. Chronic fatigue syndrome. J Rehabil Med. 2008 Nov;40(10):882-3; author reply 883-5. doi: 10.2340/16501977-0261. https://www.medicaljournals.se/jrm/content/abstract/10.2340/16501977-0261