Poenaru, Sonia, Abdallah, Sara J, Corrales-Medina, Vicente et al. · Therapeutic advances in infectious disease · 2021 · DOI
Some people who recover from COVID-19 continue experiencing prolonged symptoms like fatigue, difficulty breathing, and brain fog for months afterward. These lingering symptoms are remarkably similar to ME/CFS, a chronic illness characterized by severe fatigue that worsens with activity. While COVID-19 could potentially trigger ME/CFS in some people, researchers currently don't have enough evidence to confirm this connection.
This review highlights critical similarities between post-COVID symptoms and ME/CFS, raising awareness among clinicians and patients about a potential new disease mechanism and population at risk. Understanding COVID-19's potential role in triggering ME/CFS could improve early identification, prevention strategies, and clinical management for both conditions.
This narrative review does not establish COVID-19 as a confirmed infectious trigger for ME/CFS—it identifies important clinical similarities but lacks definitive epidemiological or mechanistic proof. The review acknowledges that symptom overlap does not prove causation, and determining actual incidence and risk factors requires prospective longitudinal research beyond this scope.
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
Poenaru, Sonia, Abdallah, Sara J, Corrales-Medina, Vicente, & Cowan, Juthaporn (2021). COVID-19 and post-infectious myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome: a narrative review.. Therapeutic advances in infectious disease. https://doi.org/10.1177/20499361211009385
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-poenaru-2021-covid-post,
author = {Poenaru, Sonia and Abdallah, Sara J and Corrales-Medina, Vicente and Cowan, Juthaporn},
title = {COVID-19 and post-infectious myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome: a narrative review.},
journal = {Therapeutic advances in infectious disease},
year = {2021},
doi = {10.1177/20499361211009385},
note = {PubMed: 33959278},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/poenaru-2021-covid-post},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-27. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/poenaru-2021-covid-post
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