Deoxygenation Trends and Their Multivariate Association with Self-Reported Fatigue in Post-COVID Syndrome.
Ladek, Anja-Maria, Lucio, Marianna, Weiß, Andreas et al.·Biomedicines·2025
This study looked at oxygen levels in the muscles of 100 people with long COVID and 50 healthy controls while they performed light exercise (squeezing a stress ball). The researchers used a special non-invasive scan called NIRS to measure this. People with long COVID, especially those with post-exertional malaise, showed abnormal oxygen patterns in their muscles compared to healthy people, and this was linked to their fatigue levels.