Multidisciplinary rehabilitation treatment is not effective for ME/CFS: a review of the FatiGo trial

Multidisciplinary rehabilitation treatment is not effective for myalgic encephalomyelitis/chCronic fatigue syndrome: A review of the FatiGo trial, by Mark Vink and Alexandra Vink-Niese in Health Psychol Open. 2018 Jul-Dec; 5(2): 2055102918792648 [Published online 2018 Aug 6]

Research abstract:
The FatiGo trial concluded that multidisciplinary rehabilitation treatment is more effective for chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis in the long term than cognitive behaviour therapy and that multidisciplinary rehabilitation treatment is more cost-effective for fatigue and cognitive behaviour therapy for quality of life.

However, FatiGo suffered from a number of serious methodological flaws. Moreover, it ignored the results of the activity metre, its only objective outcome. This jeopardizes the validity of FatiGo. Its analysis shows that there was no statistically significant difference between multidisciplinary rehabilitation treatment and cognitive behaviour therapy and neither are (cost-)effective.

FatiGo’s claims of efficacy of multidisciplinary rehabilitation treatment and cognitive behaviour therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis are misleading and not justified by their results.