Scientists are starting to get insights into the lingering disorder that affects some people infected with SARS-CoV-2 — but many mysteries remain unsolved.
Surveys of thousands of people have revealed an extensive list of symptoms, such as fatigue, dry cough, shortness of breath, headaches and muscle aches. A team led by Athena Akrami, a neuroscientist at University College London who has long COVID, found 205 symptoms in a study of more than 3,500 people1. By month 6, the most common were “fatigue, post-exertional malaise, and cognitive dysfunction”. These symptoms fluctuate, and people often go through phases of feeling better before relapsing
Nature has an article on Long COVID that covers a section on ME/CFS and shows how there are many similarities. One of the Doctors asks whether greater insights into ME/CFS might be gained from the study of Long COVID. The full article can be read from the button below
The section on ME/CFS is shown below
Some scientists weren’t surprised by long COVID. Illnesses that linger after an infection have been reported in the scientific literature for 100 years, says Anthony Komaroff, an internal-medicine physician at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.
He noted that fact in March, during a webinar organised by MEAction, an organization based in Santa Monica, California, that works to raise awareness of myalgic encephalitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). People with this debilitating illness become exhausted after even mild activity, alongside experiencing other symptoms such as headaches. Long dismissed by some medical professionals because it had no clear biological underpinning, ME/CFS is often post-viral.
It isn’t uncommon for an infection to trigger long-lasting symptoms. One study of 253 people diagnosed with certain viral or bacterial infections found that after 6 months, 12% reported persistent symptoms including “disabling fatigue, musculoskeletal pain, neurocognitive difficulties, and mood disturbance”10. That percentage is strikingly similar to the long COVID prevalence observed in the United Kingdom by the ONS.
Some people with long COVID will probably meet the diagnostic criteria for ME/CFS, according to Komaroff and his colleague Lucinda Bateman, founder of the Bateman Horne Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, which specializes in treating ME/CFS11. But there do seem to be differences: for instance, people with long COVID are more likely to report shortness of breath than are those with ME/CFS, Komaroff says. Furthermore, if long COVID does end up being subdivided into multiple syndromes, that will further complicate comparisons between it and ME/CFS.
“I’ve so far resisted saying long COVID is ME/CFS, because I really think it is an umbrella term and there are multiple things happening in this long COVID umbrella,” says Nisreen Alwan, a public-health researcher at the University of Southampton, UK. And Deeks speaks for many: “I think everybody needs to be a bit agnostic now, and not make too many assumptions, and not put all these different syndromes into the same bucket.” What many do agree on, however, is that the two conditions could productively be studied in tandem. “There should be a coalition,” says Alwan. Some researchers are already planning to collaborate. For instance, a major study called DecodeME aims to recruit 20,000 people to find genetic factors that contribute to ME/CFS — and Evans says PHOSP-COVID will be sharing data with it.
“I’m really hopeful that the silver lining will be, at the end of the day, we gain better insight into other post-viral problems,” says Akrami.
Hastie puts it more bluntly: “Let’s not waste a good crisis.”