Grach, Stephanie L, Dudenkov, Daniel V, Pollack, Beth et al. · Frontiers in neurology · 2024 · DOI
This study looked at 247 patients with Long COVID who visited Mayo Clinic to see what new health problems developed after their COVID-19 infection. Researchers compared them to 40 people who had COVID-19 but recovered normally. The results showed that Long COVID patients experienced much higher rates of pain, neurological symptoms, sleep problems, and other issues. Importantly, 58% of Long COVID patients screened positive for ME/CFS—a serious fatigue and post-exertional symptom condition—compared to none of the control group.
This study provides critical evidence of significant overlap between Long COVID and ME/CFS, with more than half of Long COVID patients screening positive for ME/CFS—a finding that could reshape how clinicians evaluate and treat post-COVID patients. For ME/CFS researchers, the data suggest Long COVID may provide an opportunity to study ME/CFS mechanisms in a more recently defined patient cohort, potentially advancing understanding of both conditions.
This study does not establish causation or prove that COVID-19 definitively causes ME/CFS or the other comorbidities; it only documents their co-occurrence. The low survey response rate (33.7% of LC patients) means the findings may not represent all Long COVID patients, particularly those who are very ill or less engaged with healthcare. The cross-sectional design cannot determine whether these conditions were truly new or represent pre-existing conditions that worsened.
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
Grach, Stephanie L, Dudenkov, Daniel V, Pollack, Beth, Fairweather, DeLisa, Aakre, Chris A, Munipalli, Bala, et al. (2024). Overlapping conditions in Long COVID at a multisite academic center.. Frontiers in neurology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fneur.2024.1482917
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-grach-2024-overlapping-conditions,
author = {Grach, Stephanie L and Dudenkov, Daniel V and Pollack, Beth and Fairweather, DeLisa and Aakre, Chris A and Munipalli, Bala and Croghan, Ivana T and Mueller, Michael R and Overgaard, Joshua D and Bruno, Katelyn A and Collins, Nerissa M and Li, Zhuo and Hurt, Ryan T and Tal, Michal C and Ganesh, Ravindra and Knight, Dacre T R},
title = {Overlapping conditions in Long COVID at a multisite academic center.},
journal = {Frontiers in neurology},
year = {2024},
doi = {10.3389/fneur.2024.1482917},
note = {PubMed: 39524912},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/grach-2024-overlapping-conditions},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-28. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/grach-2024-overlapping-conditions
Contribute
Private, reviewed by a human. Not a public comment thread.