Researchers and medical experts have been studying the effects of the COVID-19 virus in a portion of people who were diagnosed with the disease who are still dealing with impairments, sometimes months or even a year or more after diagnosis.
Cases where some impairments linger for a long time after a COVID diagnosis are known as Long COVID cases due to ongoing impairments a portion of COVID survivors suffer from.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins Medicine published a review article comparing the Long COVID impairments and impairments suffered by people diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome. The researchers contend that symptoms shared in the two conditions may involve a biological response under certain circumstances, which may be a reason Long COVID survivors suffer from impairments similar to chronic fatigue syndrome. Below is portion of the article.
As of August 2021, approximately 36 million Americans have been diagnosed with COVID-19. “We do not yet know how many of these patients will experience long COVID, but it’s estimated that at least 7% experience extended symptoms,” says co-author Anthony Komaroff, M.D., the Steven P. Simcox, Patrick A. Clifford and James H. Higby Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
The expert team urges that some of the recent National Institutes of Health funding assigned to study the long-term health effects of COVID-19 be used to investigate both long COVID and ME/CFS. Those studies, they believe, could shed light on other diseases characterized by oxidative stress, inflammation and metabolic disorders.
ME/CFS is a complex condition affecting 1 million to 2.5 million people in the United States. It is characterized by a cluster of symptoms, including severe and debilitating fatigue, disrupted and unrefreshing sleep, difficulty thinking (commonly called “brain fog”), abnormalities of the autonomic nervous system and post-exertional malaise — a flare-up of multiple symptoms following physical or cognitive exertion.
