Some Long-COVID Cases Have Met ME/CFS Diagnosis, But That May Solve Nothing

The sad thing is how shockingly little we know about myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).

Shin Jie Yong, MSc (Res)
Microbial Instincts

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Roughly 70 outbreaks of myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) of unknown causes occurred in the 20th Century. One such instance was in 1955 in the U.K. Royal Free Hospital, where 255 medical workers were mysteriously hospitalized.

This event led Melvin Ramsay, M.A., M.D., to coin the term ME, which the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized as an official medical condition by 1969. In early 2000, ME was viewed as synonymous with CFS, so ME/CFS is now used to describe this condition.

A common trigger of ME/CFS is viral infections, of which Covid-19 comes into mind. While the survival rate of Covid-19 is approximately 98%, about 10–30% of survivors will develop long-COVID, a chronic post-viral syndrome that can last up to 6–9 months. Long-COVID is not predicted by initial disease severity or health status, so even mild Covid-19 can leave previously healthy individuals disabled for the long-term.

Long-COVID gained widespread attention around May 2020 among social support groups and later on among the experts. At that time…

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Shin Jie Yong, MSc (Res)
Microbial Instincts

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