Daynes, Enya, Mills, George, Hull, James H et al. · Chest · 2024 · DOI
This review examines whether pulmonary rehabilitation programs—treatments originally designed to help people with chronic lung diseases—might also help people with long COVID who experience breathlessness and fatigue. The authors suggest that because long COVID and chronic lung diseases cause similar problems with breathing and activity tolerance, rehabilitation programs that combine breathing exercises, strength training, and education could be beneficial for long COVID patients. However, they note that special care is needed for people whose symptoms worsen with exercise (postexertional malaise).
This work is crucial for ME/CFS patients because many experience post-viral fatigue and functional decline similar to long COVID, and the authors specifically recommend consulting chronic fatigue syndrome evidence when designing exercise interventions to avoid harm from postexertional malaise. The review provides a framework for safely structuring rehabilitation in populations with exertional symptoms, which is directly applicable to ME/CFS management.
This narrative review does not provide definitive proof that pulmonary rehabilitation programs are effective for long COVID or ME/CFS populations—it synthesizes existing evidence and highlights where evidence is lacking. The review cannot establish causality for any specific mechanisms and does not present new clinical trial data demonstrating efficacy. It also does not prove that long COVID rehabilitation protocols will work identically for ME/CFS patients, despite acknowledged similarities.
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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