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).

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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, many predicted that long-COVID would eventually lead to ME/CFS. Nearly 10 months have passed since, and they were partly right. Some cases of long-COVID did turn out to be ME/CFS, but does this knowledge really solve anything?

ME/CFS diagnostic criteria

Although there are many case definitions for ME/CFS, only three are accurate and widely used:

1. The 1994 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) diagnostic criteria for ME/CFS is severe fatigue lasting for at least six months with at least four of the following symptoms: cognitive impairment, tender lymph nodes, sore throat, muscle pain, multi-joint pain, post-exertional malaise, unrefreshing sleep, and headaches.
2. The 2003 Canadian Consensus Criteria for ME/CFS is fatigue, post-exertional malaise, sleep dysfunction, muscle or joint pain, and cognitive impairment for six months or more.