Bonuck, Karen, Gao, Qi, Congdon, Seth et al. · Communications medicine · 2026 · DOI
This study measured how much disability Long COVID causes in American adults and compared it to other diseases like Alzheimer's and asthma. The researchers found that Long COVID causes as much disability as these well-known conditions, yet the U.S. government funds research on Long COVID with only 14% of the money it should based on that disability burden. The study also found that diseases affecting mostly women receive about 5 times less research funding per unit of disability than diseases affecting mostly men.
ME/CFS and Long COVID share overlapping pathophysiology and disability burden yet remain severely underfunded relative to comparable conditions. This study demonstrates systematic underfunding of female-predominant conditions and provides quantitative evidence that research funding decisions do not reflect actual disease disability burden, directly advocating for resource reallocation toward ME/CFS and similar neglected conditions affecting primarily women.
This study does not prove that increased funding would improve Long COVID or ME/CFS outcomes, nor does it establish causation between funding levels and health disparities. It also does not account for other factors influencing funding decisions (e.g., patent potential, advocacy visibility, research feasibility), and cross-sectional design precludes temporal relationships. The study cannot explain why YLDs account for only 6.5% of funding variance.
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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Primary citation
Bonuck, Karen, Gao, Qi, Congdon, Seth, & Kim, Ryung S (2026). Long COVID disability burden in US adults.. Communications medicine. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43856-026-01516-7
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-bonuck-2026-long-covid,
author = {Bonuck, Karen and Gao, Qi and Congdon, Seth and Kim, Ryung S},
title = {Long COVID disability burden in US adults.},
journal = {Communications medicine},
year = {2026},
doi = {10.1038/s43856-026-01516-7},
note = {PubMed: 41917225},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/bonuck-2026-long-covid},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-25. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/bonuck-2026-long-covid
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