Andrew Lloyd

Source:UNSW Sydney

Andrew R. Lloyd, MB BS Syd, MD UNSW, FRACP, is an infectious disease physician, and an epidemiology, virology and immunology researcher. He is a professor at the School of Medical Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

He is one of the authors of the 2002 Australian chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) guidelines, which were immediately criticized by ME/CFS Australia who stated the guidelines:

• do not describe accurately and fully the symptoms and characteristics of the illness;
• misrepresent the illness and people with CFS;
• do not provide an accurate, balanced and objective consideration of the research evidence;
• demonstrate a consistent bias towards a psychiatric-psychological approach to the illness;
• dismiss, downplay or ignore biological evidence;
• make illness management suggestions that are potentially harmful for many with CFS; and
• do not mention other ways of effectively managing the illness.

In a following letter to the Medical Journal of Australia, ME/CFS Australia stated:

"Following an extensive review of the literature, it is considered that the evidence is not good enough for the Guidelines to be called ‘evidence-based,’ the assessment and presentation of the evidence has not been objective, the Working Group was not truly representative and so the end product is unreliable. The document provides potentially harmfulmanagement suggestions with insufficient supporting evidence."

More than 700 people signed a petition asking him to stop the roll out of training medical professionals to use CBT and GET on people diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. The university responded, stating the people who are protesting harbour ‘resentment against the notion that CFS may have psychological causes’, while there is no evidence for their argument.

Lloyd is on the Australian government's ME and CFS advisory committee.

Lloyd described the PACE trial has having "reasonably solid data".

Awards

• Member, Order of Australia (A.M): “For service to medicine and the community, particularly through provision of hepatitis services in prisons, and research in infectious diseases”

Clinic

• The Fatigue Centre, Newtown, New South Wales, Australia, was created and is supervised by Dr. Andrew Lloyd to serve patients with CFS and post-cancer fatigue.
• David Tuller met with patients of the clinic, who 'reported that their experience included some positive and some very negative aspects'.

Book Chapters

• 1999, "Chronic fatigue syndrome: current concepts of pathogenesis and treatment," in Current Clinical Topics in Infectious Diseases, edn. Original
• 2005, "Fatigue states following infection," in Infectious Diseases A clinical approach, edn. 2

Notable studies

• 1990, A double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of intravenous immunoglobulin therapy in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome
• 1997, Intravenous immunoglobulin is ineffective in the treatment of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome
• 1998, Chronic fatigue syndrome: An immunological perspective
• 2003, Identification of ambiguities in the 1994 chronic fatigue syndrome research case definition and recommendations for resolution (Full Text)
• 2006, Post-infective and chronic fatigue syndromes precipitated by viral and non-viral pathogens: Prospective cohort study (Abstract)
• 2006, Preliminary evidence of mitochondrial dysfunction associated with post-infective fatigue after acute infection with Epstein Barr Virus (Full Text)
• 2006, Prolonged Illness after Infectious Mononucleosis Is Associated with Altered Immunity but Not with Increased Viral Load (Full Text)
• 2007, Postinfective fatigue syndrome is not associated with altered cytokine production
• 2007, Fatigue: case definition and guidelines for collection, analysis, and presentation of immunization safety data (Preview)
• 2010, Serum Cytokine Levels in Postinfective Fatigue Syndrome (Full Text)
• 2010, Autonomic hyper-vigilance in post-infective fatigue syndrome
• 2010, Reduced heart rate variability predicts poor sleep quality in a case-control study of chronic fatigue syndrome
• 2011, Sleep-wake behavior in chronic fatigue syndrome
• 2012, Reduced Cardiac Vagal Modulation Impacts on Cognitive Performance in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
• 2015, Capturing the post-exertional exacerbation of fatigue following physical and cognitive challenge in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome
• 2016, University of NSW tests graded activity program on mild chronic fatigue syndrome patients
• 2016, Fatigue Exacerbation by Interval or Continuous Exercise in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
• 2016, Outcomes and predictors of response from an optimised, multidisciplinary intervention for chronic fatigue states
• 2016, Gene Expression in Response to Exercise in Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Pilot Study (Full Text)
• 2016, Neurocognitive improvements after best-practice intervention for chronic fatigue syndrome: Preliminary evidence of divergence between objective indices and subjective perceptions
• 2016, The natural history of acute Q fever: A prospective Australian cohort
• 2017, Cytokine signature in chronic fatigue syndrome
• 2017, Autonomic nervous system function, activity patterns, and sleep after physical or cognitive challenge in people with chronic fatigue syndrome [pubmed:30741357](Abstract)
• 2018, Personalised relaxation practice to improve sleep and functioning in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome and depression: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial (Full Text)
• 2018, The International Collaborative on Fatigue Following Infection (COFFI) (Full text)

• 2019, The Invisible Burden of Chronic Fatigue in the Community: a Narrative Review (Abstract)

Talks and interviews

• Apr 22, 2014, Talk to Coogee Owls ME/CFS Support Group at Randwick, Sydney

• Sep 1-2, 2014, UK CFS/ME Research Collaborative Conference - Talk title: "Acute infection & post-infective fatigue as a model for CFS"

Online presence

• UNSW bio page

See also

• Australia

Learn more

• 2012, "Model of Post Infective Fatigue Forming: the Dubbo Studies" in Phoenix Rising

• 2015, "The Decline and Fall of an ME/CFS Researcher? the Case of Andrew Lloyd" by Cort Johnson for Health Rising
• 2018, Trial By Error: A Post About Andrew Lloyd

See chronic fatigue syndrome.

See myalgic encephalomyelitis.

Bias in research is "a systematic deviation of an observation from the true clinical state". (Learn more: me-pedia.org)

bias Bias in research is "a systematic deviation of an observation from the true clinical state". (Learn more: me-pedia.org)

double blinded trial A clinical trial is double blinded if neither the participants nor the researchers know which treatment group they are allocated to until after the results are interpreted. This reduces bias. (Learn more: www.nottingham.ac.uk)

See antibody.

antibodies Antibody/immunoglobulin refers to any of a large number of specific proteins produced by B cells that act against an antigen in an immune response.

serum The clear yellowish fluid that remains from blood plasma after clotting factors have been removed by clot formation. (Blood plasma is simply blood that has had its blood cells removed.)

(HR) - the number of times the heart beats within a certain time period, usually a minute

heart rate (HR) - the number of times the heart beats within a certain time period, usually a minute

cognition Thought processes, including attention, reasoning, and memory.

cognition Thought processes, including attention, reasoning, and memory.

randomized controlled trial (RCT) - A trial in which participants are randomly assigned to two groups, with one group receiving the treatment being studied and a control or comparison group receiving a sham treatment, placebo, or comparison treatment.

chronic fatigue (CF) - Persistent and abnormal fatigue is a symptom, not an illness. It may be caused by depression, multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome or many other illnesses. The term "chronic fatigue" should never be confused with the disease chronic fatigue syndrome.

The BMJ (previously the British Medical Journal) is a weekly peer-reviewed medical journal.

BMJ The BMJ (previously the British Medical Journal) is a weekly peer-reviewed medical journal.

mitochondria Important parts of the biological cell, with each mitochondrion encased within a mitochondrial membrane. Mitochondria are best known for their role in energy production, earning them the nickname "the powerhouse of the cell". Mitochondria also participate in the detection of threats and the response to these threats. One of the responses to threats orchestrated by mitochondria is apoptosis, a cell suicide program used by cells when the threat can not be eliminated.

cytokine any class of immunoregulatory proteins secreted by cells, especially immune cells. Cytokines are small proteins important in cell signaling that modulate the immune system. (Learn more: me-pedia.org)

cytokine any class of immunoregulatory proteins secreted by cells, especially immune cells. Cytokines are small proteins important in cell signaling that modulate the immune system. (Learn more: me-pedia.org)

somatic symptom disorder A psychiatric term to describe an alleged condition whereby a person's thoughts somehow cause physical symptoms. The actual existence of such a condition is highly controversial, due to a lack of scientific evidence. It is related to other psychiatric terms, such as "psychosomatic", "neurasthenia", and "hysteria". Older terms include "somatization", "somatoform disorder", and "conversion disorder". Such terms refer to a scientifically-unsupported theory that claims that a wide range of physical symptoms can be created by the human mind, a theory which has been criticized as "mind over matter" parapsychology, a pseudoscience.