Cogliandro, Viola, Bonfanti, Paolo · The new microbiologica · 2024
This review examined Long COVID, a condition affecting 10-20% of people who had COVID-19 infection. Long COVID causes multiple symptoms across different body systems that significantly reduce quality of life. The review highlights that some Long COVID patients develop conditions like POTS (a heart rhythm problem when standing), ME/CFS (severe fatigue and post-exertional symptoms), and brain fog, and summarizes what treatments might help.
This comprehensive review is significant for ME/CFS patients because it establishes the overlap between Long COVID and ME/CFS as a recognized clinical entity, potentially improving recognition and diagnosis in post-viral populations. It synthesizes evidence on multiple overlapping conditions that share features with ME/CFS, which may accelerate understanding of shared pathophysiological mechanisms and inform treatment development for both conditions.
This review does not prove causation or establish definitive mechanisms explaining why COVID-19 leads to ME/CFS-like symptoms. It cannot validate specific treatments as definitively effective, only summarize existing therapeutic approaches, and does not provide individual patient outcome predictions or explain why only some COVID-19 patients develop Long COVID.
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
Cogliandro, Viola & Bonfanti, Paolo (2024). Long COVID: lights and shadows on the clinical characterization of this emerging pathology.. The new microbiologica. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38700879/
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-cogliandro-2024-long-covid,
author = {Cogliandro, Viola and Bonfanti, Paolo},
title = {Long COVID: lights and shadows on the clinical characterization of this emerging pathology.},
journal = {The new microbiologica},
year = {2024},
note = {PubMed: 38700879},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/cogliandro-2024-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/cogliandro-2024-long-covid
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