Bileviciute-Ljungar, Indre, Norrefalk, Jan-Rickard, Borg, Kristian · Journal of clinical medicine · 2022 · DOI
This study looked at 100 people who had mild COVID-19 but developed long-lasting symptoms afterward. Researchers asked about their pain, fatigue, sleep problems, and quality of life. Three-quarters of the participants reported widespread pain in various parts of their body, and many showed signs of fibromyalgia. The study found that pain is a major problem for people with long COVID and needs better treatment.
Pain is frequently overlooked in post-COVID syndrome despite significantly impacting quality of life and function. This study documents that pain affects the majority of long COVID patients and should be recognized as a core symptom requiring clinical attention, similar to fatigue and post-exertional malaise. For ME/CFS researchers, this highlights the shared pain burden between post-COVID syndrome and ME/CFS, supporting the need for integrated pain management strategies in both conditions.
This study cannot establish whether pain is directly caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection, as it lacks a control group and cannot exclude pre-existing or concurrent conditions. The cross-sectional design means we cannot determine whether pain develops before or after other post-COVID symptoms. The high female representation (82%) limits conclusions about pain prevalence in male patients with post-COVID syndrome.
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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