Abstract:
Background Post-COVID-19 syndrome, also known as long COVID, is a disorder that has many characteristics, one of which is chronic fatigue following acute infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Methodology We distributed a web-based survey among patients diagnosed with COVID-19 across the world and collected 190 responses regarding their demographics, histories, COVID-19 infection courses, and common symptoms.
Results We found that about 85.3% of the patients experienced some form of symptom following recovery from the infection. Among the reported symptoms, 59% of patients experienced fatigue or lethargy, 48.9% reported decreased stamina, 32.6% reported shortness of breath, 16.8% had a persistent cough, and 23.7% experienced anxiety following recovery from COVID-19.
Conclusions Reported symptoms closely resembled myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS); however, a deeper biochemical understanding of ME/CFS is required to confirm causation.
Source: Shaikh S, Siddiqi Z, Ukachukwu C, Mehkari Z, Khan S, Pamurthy K, Jahan F, Brown A. COVID-19: Post-recovery Manifestations. Cureus. 2023 Mar 29;15(3):e36886. doi: 10.7759/cureus.36886. PMID: 37128534; PMCID: PMC10147564. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10147564/ (Full text)