Marwaha, Bharat · Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2023 · DOI
Long COVID causes ongoing fatigue, breathing problems, brain fog, and other symptoms that can last months or years. This review suggests that a protein called tau—which is known to damage the brain in other diseases—may also be involved in Long COVID. The authors propose that future research should look for tau damage in Long COVID patients and that treatments designed to stop tau buildup might help.
ME/CFS and Long COVID share overlapping symptoms including post-exertional malaise, cognitive dysfunction, and fatigue with unclear biological mechanisms. If tau accumulation is confirmed as a contributing factor in Long COVID, it could open new therapeutic avenues and potentially explain some pathophysiology in ME/CFS, leading to testable biomarkers and disease-modifying treatments.
This review does not establish that tau is definitively causing Long COVID symptoms—it presents an hypothesis based on limited autopsy and organoid studies. The authors do not provide original clinical data, longitudinal patient outcomes, or direct evidence that tau-targeted therapies would improve Long COVID. Correlation between tau presence and Long COVID symptoms has not been causally demonstrated.
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 →
Spotted an error in this entry? Report it →