Abbott, Zachary, Summers, William, Niehaus, William · Physical medicine and rehabilitation clinics of North America · 2023 · DOI
This review examines fatigue experienced by people recovering from COVID-19, which can be severe and long-lasting. The authors explain that this fatigue likely has multiple different causes in different people, rather than one single explanation. They suggest that treatments work best when doctors identify what might be causing each patient's fatigue and create personalized activity plans that gradually increase over time.
This study is important because it recognizes that post-COVID fatigue—like ME/CFS—is not a single disease with one cause, but rather a complex condition that may require different treatments for different people. For patients struggling with fatigue after COVID-19, this framework validates the need for personalized care rather than one-size-fits-all approaches.
This review does not prove what specifically causes fatigue in any individual patient, nor does it establish the efficacy of any particular treatment. As a review article synthesizing existing literature rather than presenting new clinical trial data, it cannot establish causation or provide definitive evidence that one treatment approach is superior to others.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
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