Ovejero, Diana, Ribes, Anna, Villar-García, Judit et al. · BMC complementary medicine and therapies · 2025 · DOI
Researchers tested whether balneotherapy (therapeutic bathing and aquatic exercises) could help people with long COVID symptoms. Ninety-eight adults with long COVID participated—half received 12 sessions of balneotherapy over one month, while the other half did not. The treatment group showed improvements in sleep quality, anxiety, pain, and fatigue compared to the control group, though some people experienced temporary worsening of fatigue during early sessions.
This study addresses a critical gap in evidence-based treatments for long COVID/PACS, demonstrating that a non-pharmacological intervention can provide measurable symptom relief. For ME/CFS patients and researchers, it contributes to understanding mechanisms of fatigue and pain management while highlighting the need for careful monitoring of post-exertional worsening in exercise-based interventions.
This study does not establish that balneotherapy is a cure or that its benefits persist long-term beyond the one-month follow-up period. It cannot definitively separate the effects of aquatic immersion from those of structured exercise, and the predominantly female, middle-aged sample with mild initial infections limits generalizability to other ME/CFS phenotypes. The transient worsening in some participants suggests potential harm in certain subgroups, requiring further investigation.
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
Ovejero, Diana, Ribes, Anna, Villar-García, Judit, Trenchs-Rodriguez, Marta, Lopez, Daniel, Nogués, Xavier, et al. (2025). Balneotherapy for the treatment of post-COVID syndrome: a randomized controlled trial.. BMC complementary medicine and therapies. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12906-025-04784-3
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-ovejero-2025-balneotherapy-treatment,
author = {Ovejero, Diana and Ribes, Anna and Villar-García, Judit and Trenchs-Rodriguez, Marta and Lopez, Daniel and Nogués, Xavier and Güerri-Fernandez, Robert and Garcia-Giralt, Natalia},
title = {Balneotherapy for the treatment of post-COVID syndrome: a randomized controlled trial.},
journal = {BMC complementary medicine and therapies},
year = {2025},
doi = {10.1186/s12906-025-04784-3},
note = {PubMed: 39905419},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/ovejero-2025-balneotherapy-treatment},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-27. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/ovejero-2025-balneotherapy-treatment
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