El Moussaoui, Majdouline, Guiot, Julien, Frippiat, Frédéric et al. · Revue medicale de Liege · 2023
Some people who had COVID-19 develop long-lasting symptoms months or years after infection, a condition called long COVID. These symptoms include severe fatigue, muscle pain, shortness of breath, and neurological problems that are similar to those seen in ME/CFS. This review examines what we know about who develops long COVID, what causes it, and how doctors currently diagnose and treat it.
This review is important for ME/CFS patients and researchers because it highlights the striking clinical similarity between long COVID and ME/CFS, suggesting shared disease mechanisms. Understanding long COVID's epidemiology and pathophysiology may provide insights into ME/CFS pathogenesis and could inform development of diagnostic criteria and treatments applicable to both conditions.
As a narrative review, this study does not prove causation between any specific mechanism and long COVID symptoms, nor does it establish diagnostic criteria or treatment efficacy. The review acknowledges that underlying mechanisms are 'still poorly known,' meaning definitive pathophysiological pathways remain unidentified. The article cannot establish whether long COVID and ME/CFS share identical mechanisms versus having overlapping but distinct etiologies.
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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