• J Gen Intern Med · Jan 2025

    Incidence and Prevalence of Post-COVID-19 Myalgic Encephalomyelitis: A Report from the Observational RECOVER-Adult Study.

    • Suzanne D Vernon, Tianyu Zheng, Hyungrok Do, Vincent C Marconi, Leonard A Jason, Nora G Singer, Benjamin H Natelson, Zaki A Sherif, Hector Fabio Bonilla, Emily Taylor, Janet M Mullington, Hassan Ashktorab, Adeyinka O Laiyemo, Hassan Brim, Thomas F Patterson, Teresa T Akintonwa, Anisha Sekar, Michael J Peluso, Nikita Maniar, Lucinda Bateman, Leora I Horwitz, Rachel Hess, and NIH Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) Consortium.
    • Bateman Horne Center, 24 S 1100 E Suite 205, Salt Lake City, UT, USA. sdvernon@batemanhornecenter.org.
    • J Gen Intern Med. 2025 Jan 13.

    BackgroundMyalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) may occur after infection. How often people develop ME/CFS after SARS-CoV-2 infection is unknown.ObjectiveTo determine the incidence and prevalence of post-COVID-19 ME/CFS among adults enrolled in the Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER-Adult) study.Design, Setting, And ParticipantsRECOVER-Adult is a longitudinal observational cohort study conducted across the U.S. We included participants who had a study visit at least 6 months after infection and had no pre-existing ME/CFS, grouped as (1) acute infected, enrolled within 30 days of infection or enrolled as uninfected who became infected (n=4515); (2) post-acute infected, enrolled greater than 30 days after infection (n=7270); and (3) uninfected (1439).MeasurementsIncidence rate and prevalence of post-COVID-19 ME/CFS based on the 2015 Institute of Medicine ME/CFS clinical diagnostic criteria.ResultsThe incidence rate of ME/CFS in participants followed from time of SARS-CoV-2 infection was 2.66 (95% CI 2.63-2.70) per 100 person-years while the rate in matched uninfected participants was 0.93 (95% CI 0.91-10.95) per 100 person-years: a hazard ratio of 4.93 (95% CI 3.62-6.71). The proportion of all RECOVER-Adult participants that met criteria for ME/CFS following SARS-CoV-2 infection was 4.5% (531 of 11,785) compared to 0.6% (9 of 1439) in uninfected participants. Post-exertional malaise was the most common ME/CFS symptom in infected participants (24.0%, 2830 of 11,785). Most participants with post-COVID-19 ME/CFS also met RECOVER criteria for long COVID (88.7%, 471 of 531).LimitationsThe ME/CFS clinical diagnostic criteria uses self-reported symptoms. Symptoms can wax and wane.ConclusionME/CFS is a diagnosable sequela that develops at an increased rate following SARS-CoV-2 infection. RECOVER provides an unprecedented opportunity to study post-COVID-19 ME/CFS.© 2025. The Author(s).

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…