Astin, Rónan, Banerjee, Amitava, Baker, Mark R et al. · Experimental physiology · 2023 · DOI
This review examines Long COVID—a prolonged illness affecting some people after COVID-19 infection—and compares it to similar post-viral conditions like ME/CFS. Researchers found that Long COVID involves problems with the heart and lungs, muscle function, and how the body regulates its nervous system. The review discusses various treatment approaches being tested, including exercise programs, breathing exercises, and techniques to help calm an overactive nervous system.
This review is crucial for ME/CFS patients because it explicitly connects Long COVID research with ME/CFS, highlighting shared mechanisms and treatment strategies. For the ME/CFS research community, it demonstrates how rapidly advancing Long COVID research—particularly regarding dysautonomia, oxygen delivery, and energy metabolism—provides new insights applicable to understanding chronic post-viral illnesses more broadly.
This review does not establish new causal mechanisms through original research; it synthesizes existing literature. It does not prove that any particular treatment is definitively effective for Long COVID or ME/CFS, only that various approaches are being trialled. The comparison between Long COVID and ME/CFS remains exploratory and does not conclusively establish that both conditions share identical underlying pathophysiology.
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 →
The first block is for the primary paper and is the citation you should use in research work. The atlas-snapshot line only applies if you are specifically referring to this atlas’s reading of the paper on the date shown.
Primary citation
Astin, Rónan, Banerjee, Amitava, Baker, Mark R, Dani, Melanie, Ford, Elizabeth, Hull, James H, et al. (2023). Long COVID: mechanisms, risk factors and recovery.. Experimental physiology. https://doi.org/10.1113/EP090802
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-astin-2023-long-covid,
author = {Astin, Rónan and Banerjee, Amitava and Baker, Mark R and Dani, Melanie and Ford, Elizabeth and Hull, James H and Lim, Phang Boon and McNarry, Melitta and Morten, Karl and O'Sullivan, Oliver and Pretorius, Etheresia and Raman, Betty and Soteropoulos, Demetris S and Taquet, Maxime and Hall, Catherine N},
title = {Long COVID: mechanisms, risk factors and recovery.},
journal = {Experimental physiology},
year = {2023},
doi = {10.1113/EP090802},
note = {PubMed: 36412084},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/astin-2023-long-covid},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-27. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/astin-2023-long-covid
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