Cahalan, Roisin M, Meade, Ciara, Mockler, Sarah · Canadian journal of respiratory therapy : CJRT = Revue canadienne de la therapie respiratoire : RCTR · 2022 · DOI
Researchers tested a 10-week online program called SingStrong that combines breathing exercises, singing, and mindfulness to help people with long COVID. The 21 participants who completed the program reported significant improvements in breathlessness, fatigue, pain, voice quality, and ability to do daily activities. Qualitative feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with participants reporting better breathing and overall wellbeing.
Many long COVID patients experience severe breathlessness and fatigue with limited treatment options. This study provides preliminary evidence that a non-pharmacological, accessible online intervention may address multiple common symptoms simultaneously, offering hope for a relatively low-burden therapeutic approach that could be widely implemented.
This pilot study does not establish that SingStrong is definitively effective because it lacked a control group or blinded design—improvements could partly reflect placebo effect, natural recovery, or simply benefit from group support. The small sample size and high dropout rate (22% of enrolled participants) limit generalizability. The study cannot determine which components of the intervention (breathing, singing, mindfulness, or group effects) drove the observed improvements.
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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