Fatigue treatment is safe and effective

Ethan Ennals asked last week in Health whether doctors or patients are right about the lack of effectiveness and safety of graded exercise therapy (GET) for chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). While some patients have been harmed by exercise programmes that were neither graded nor therapeutic, ten scientific trials of GET show it is effective and safe when properly prescribed and delivered. Physiotherapists help patients with many chronic medical conditions using forms of exercise therapy. Surely it would be odd if CFS was the only illness not helped in this way. Why ban a treatment that has helped so many and provides patients with a way to improve their own health?

Professor Emeritus Peter White, Queen Mary University of London; Dr Alastair Miller, Consultant Physician in Infectious Disease and General Medicine; Professor Trudie Chalder, Kings College London