Research funding for chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) has been poor at best but clinical trials have elicited a wholly different degree of disappointment altogether. Few clinical trials are ever done and those often involve alternative approaches. The six active clinical trials listed in clinicaltrials.gov, for instance, include treatments like acupuncture, …
Research funding for chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) has been poor at best but clinical trials have elicited a wholly different degree of disappointment altogether. Few clinical trials are ever done and those often involve alternative approaches. The six active clinical trials listed in clinicaltrials.gov, for instance, include treatments like acupuncture, moxibustion, oral rehydration and CoQ10.
That makes it shocking to see a “new” drug – a drug not being used in other diseases – get a clinical trial in ME/CFS. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. First, it’s been assumed that repurposed drugs – drugs already in use in other disease – would be tested in ME/CFS to improve symptoms – and only later, as we understood the disease better, would we get to a drug that gets at the core problems in ME/CFS. This group believes they have a drug that gets at the core of ME/CFS now, and in the first quarter of this year they expect to test that drug.