Saito, Suguru, Shahbaz, Shima, Luo, Xian et al. · Frontiers in immunology · 2024 · DOI
This study looked at blood samples from people with long COVID who have ME/CFS-like symptoms and compared them to people who recovered from COVID, people with acute COVID, and people who never had COVID. Researchers found that long COVID patients had unusual chemical patterns in their blood, higher levels of inflammation-promoting substances, and lower energy molecules (ATP). They also discovered that two specific chemicals (sarcosine and serine) were reduced in long COVID patients and connected to depression, anxiety, and brain fog.
Understanding the metabolic and inflammatory patterns in ME/CFS-like long COVID is crucial for developing targeted treatments and biomarkers for disease diagnosis and monitoring. The identification of potentially modifiable metabolites like sarcosine and serine offers a research pathway for novel therapeutic interventions. This work helps legitimize ME/CFS symptoms as having measurable biological underpinnings rather than being purely psychological.
This study does not prove that sarcosine or serine supplementation will improve symptoms—only that low levels correlate with cognitive and mood symptoms. It does not establish causation for the metabolomic abnormalities or whether these changes cause the illness or result from it. The cross-sectional design cannot determine if these biomarkers persist over time or if they precede or follow symptom onset.
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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