Bodey, Rochelle, Grimaldi, Jennifer, Tait, Hannah et al. · Journal of clinical medicine · 2024 · DOI
This study followed people who had received specialist care for long COVID and were then discharged from the service. Nearly 3 years after their initial COVID infection, most patients (90%) still had long COVID symptoms and hadn't returned to their normal health. About 4 in 10 of these patients also met the criteria for ME/CFS, suggesting long COVID can develop into a lasting condition similar to ME/CFS.
This study provides important real-world evidence that a substantial proportion of long COVID patients experience persistent, disabling symptoms years after infection, with significant overlap with ME/CFS diagnostic criteria. Understanding this trajectory and overlap helps validate the chronic nature of post-COVID illness and supports the need for specialized, long-term management approaches for this population.
This study does not prove that long COVID causes ME/CFS or that they are the same condition—only that there is clinical overlap in symptoms. The low response rate (24%) may mean the findings overrepresent more severely affected patients who stayed engaged with services, so the actual proportion of long COVID patients developing persistent symptoms may differ in the broader population. The lack of a control group means we cannot determine what proportion of recovered long COVID patients might have similar disability levels.
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
Bodey, Rochelle, Grimaldi, Jennifer, Tait, Hannah, Godfrey, Belinda, Witton, Sharon, Shardha, Jenna, et al. (2024). How Long Is Long COVID? Evaluation of Long-Term Health Status in Individuals Discharged from a Specialist Community Long COVID Service.. Journal of clinical medicine. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm13195817
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-bodey-2024-how-long,
author = {Bodey, Rochelle and Grimaldi, Jennifer and Tait, Hannah and Godfrey, Belinda and Witton, Sharon and Shardha, Jenna and Tarrant, Rachel and Sivan, Manoj},
title = {How Long Is Long COVID? Evaluation of Long-Term Health Status in Individuals Discharged from a Specialist Community Long COVID Service.},
journal = {Journal of clinical medicine},
year = {2024},
doi = {10.3390/jcm13195817},
note = {PubMed: 39407877},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/bodey-2024-how-long},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-27. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/bodey-2024-how-long
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