Vogel, Julia Moore, Pollack, Beth, Spier, Ezra et al. · Life sciences · 2024 · DOI
This study looked at all the clinical trials being tested for Long COVID on a public database and found that most trials are not well-designed or testing treatments that have enough evidence to justify testing. The researchers recommend that future trials should test actual medications that might cure Long COVID, be able to run remotely so sick patients don't have to travel, compare Long COVID to similar illnesses like ME/CFS, include diverse patients of all backgrounds and illness levels, and involve patients as research partners.
This study is critical because it identifies systematic deficiencies in how Long COVID trials are being designed and conducted—deficiencies that directly apply to ME/CFS research as a comparison illness. The recommendations for rigorous, accessible trial design, appropriate comparator cohorts, and comprehensive symptom screening provide a roadmap for improving future ME/CFS clinical trials. By highlighting the importance of including ME/CFS as a comparator illness, this work underscores how Long COVID research can inform and improve the quality of ME/CFS research methodology.
This study does not prove which treatments actually work for Long COVID or ME/CFS—it only analyzes how trials are being designed. It does not establish causation between trial design flaws and poor outcomes; rather, it identifies correlations between current trial characteristics and methodological concerns. The study cannot demonstrate whether following these recommendations will actually lead to better treatment discoveries.
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
Vogel, Julia Moore, Pollack, Beth, Spier, Ezra, McCorkell, Lisa, Jaudon, Toni Wall, Fitzgerald, Megan, et al. (2024). Designing and optimizing clinical trials for long COVID.. Life sciences. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lfs.2024.122970
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-vogel-2024-designing-optimizing,
author = {Vogel, Julia Moore and Pollack, Beth and Spier, Ezra and McCorkell, Lisa and Jaudon, Toni Wall and Fitzgerald, Megan and Davis, Hannah and Cohen, Alison K},
title = {Designing and optimizing clinical trials for long COVID.},
journal = {Life sciences},
year = {2024},
doi = {10.1016/j.lfs.2024.122970},
note = {PubMed: 39142505},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/vogel-2024-designing-optimizing},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-25. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/vogel-2024-designing-optimizing
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