Morrow, Amanda K, Malone, Laura A, Kokorelis, Christina et al. · Current pediatrics reports · 2022 · DOI
Some teenagers who had COVID-19 develop long-lasting symptoms months after their initial infection, even if they weren't severely ill at first. These long COVID symptoms—like extreme fatigue, brain fog, and difficulty standing—look very similar to ME/CFS. This review examines how common long COVID is in teens and explains why current treatments don't work well for everyone because long COVID may actually be several different conditions.
This study is important because it formally recognizes the clinical and symptomatic overlap between post-COVID-19 conditions and ME/CFS in adolescents, suggesting that established ME/CFS management approaches may benefit long COVID patients. For ME/CFS researchers, it validates that orthostatic intolerance and post-exertional malaise are core features across these conditions, potentially supporting unified research frameworks.
This review does not establish the mechanistic causes of long COVID or ME/CFS, nor does it prove that long COVID and ME/CFS are the same disease. It also does not provide evidence that any specific treatment is effective—only that current single-agent approaches are insufficient. The study cannot determine whether observed symptom overlap reflects shared pathophysiology or convergent clinical presentations from different underlying processes.
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
Morrow, Amanda K, Malone, Laura A, Kokorelis, Christina, Petracek, Lindsay S, Eastin, Ella F, Lobner, Katie L, et al. (2022). Long-Term COVID 19 Sequelae in Adolescents: the Overlap with Orthostatic Intolerance and ME/CFS.. Current pediatrics reports. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40124-022-00261-4
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-morrow-2022-long-term,
author = {Morrow, Amanda K and Malone, Laura A and Kokorelis, Christina and Petracek, Lindsay S and Eastin, Ella F and Lobner, Katie L and Neuendorff, Luise and Rowe, Peter C},
title = {Long-Term COVID 19 Sequelae in Adolescents: the Overlap with Orthostatic Intolerance and ME/CFS.},
journal = {Current pediatrics reports},
year = {2022},
doi = {10.1007/s40124-022-00261-4},
note = {PubMed: 35287333},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/morrow-2022-long-term},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-30. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/morrow-2022-long-term
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