The Nunes and colleague paper cites a pre-print from Douglas Kell and Resia Pretorius instead of the final version of the paper, which omits critical data.
Version 1 of the pre-print claims that triple therapy led to the recovery of all 24 out of 24 patients.
Each of the 24 treated cases reported that their main symptoms were resolved and fatigue as the main symptom was relieved, and this was also reflected in a decrease of both the fibrin amyloid microclots and platelet pathology scores.
The published version of the paper omits all of that data. Thus this data either didn’t get past peer review or they retracted their astounding claims and did not try to get it past peer review.
Kell and Pretorius know this because they are co-authors on all of these papers:
- The Nunes and colleagues ME/CFS paper, which cites #2 below
- Version 1 of the pre-print which claimed that triple therapy led to recovery in 24/24 patients
- The published version of that preprint from #2- Prevalence of symptoms, comorbidities, fibrin amyloid microclots and platelet pathology in individuals with Long COVID/Post-Acute Sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC)
- ( A different pre-print where TeamClots members make optimistic claims about triple therapy - Treatment of Long COVID symptoms with triple anticoagulant therapy )
Kell and Pretorius know that they should not be citing their own pre-print when the same claims are not present in the published version of the pre-print. But they just do it anyways because very few people read scientific papers critically. They can get away with this nonsense.
This is not science.
Where the Nunes et al. paper cites the pre-print
The paper claims that anticoag and antiplatelet therapy is helpful according to the version 1 pre-print that is reference 170.
Incidentally, Long COVID suffers benefit from anticoagulant and antiplatelet therapy [170, 171]; further research is required to determine if this form of therapy will benefit ME/CFS patients exhibiting clotting pathology and thrombotic endothelialitis.
At the end of the day, their claim (anticoag helps Long COVID) isn’t supported by their citation. What they’re doing is inappropriate and misleading.
The microclots nonsense
Kell and Pretorius have consistently pushed microclots as being very important for type 2 diabetes. When that didn’t stick, they moved onto acute COVID and claimed that microclots are responsible for low blood oxygen in acute COVID patients. (We generally don’t see low blood oxygen in Long COVID.) Then they moved onto claiming that microclots are a big deal in Long COVID and ME/CFS.
Sigh.
Amy Proal of Polybio has helped give them research funding, such as Polybio’s funding of the Nunes et al. paper. Proal, Kell, and Pretorius are all co-authors on the Nunes et al. paper. There are reasons (reason$) why these people do shoddy ‘science’.
For another dive into microclots, see the post below:
Takeaways
If you are a chronic illness patient, get educated about how the real world works. Many researchers, doctors, and ‘advocacy’ organizations don’t have your best interests in mind.
There’s a lot of bad information out there. Please don’t try some crazy treatment because some scientific paper says so. The scientific literature is filled with bullshit.
I catalogue treatment approaches on this page at Long Haul Wiki. The reality is that most treatment approaches are bullshit. So please please please be really careful when your health is on the line.