Constant fatigue. Brain fog. Muscle pain.
These are the most common complaints of people with ‘long Covid’.
But a new study suggests these symptoms are just as likely to occur in people who never contracted Covid.
After following thousands of people who had tested positive and others who had not, the team found that Covid “made no difference” to whether or not someone would develop those problems: fatigue, problems with thinking or memory and muscle pain.
The study, called INSPIRE and funded by the CDC, is part of a growing body of research suggesting that long-term Covid symptoms may be exaggerated or attributed to other illnesses.
UCLA researchers found that patients who tested positive for Covid were no more likely to be diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome than patients who had never had Covid.
Violet Affleck, daughter of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, has put Covid-19 back in the spotlight after campaigning for mandatory mask wearing. The 18-year-old claims she contracted a “post-viral infection” in 2019; seen with Affleck and stepmother Jennifer Lopez in 2023
Long Covid has also been back in the spotlight recently, when Violet Affleck, the daughter of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, spoke out in favour of mandatory mask wearing.
The 18-year-old claims she contracted a “post-viral infection” in 2019.
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) recruited more than 4,000 adults who tested positive for Covid between December 2020 and August 2022.
Participants were divided into two groups: Covid-positive and Covid-negative.
Across both groups, three to four percent of participants reported symptoms consistent with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), a disease that causes extreme fatigue, mental confusion and similar symptoms.
This finding suggests that Covid made “no difference” to whether or not someone would develop the disease, despite Covid having long been considered a cause of ME/CFS.
Dr. Joann Elmore, co-senior author of the study and professor of internal medicine and health services research at UCLA, said: “ME/CFS is no more likely to occur in people infected with COVID-19 than in people with other acute illnesses.”
However, the prevalence of ME/CFS “could place a very high burden on society and our health care system,” he said.
However, one important caveat is that ME/CFS is difficult to diagnose, as there is no gold standard test for the disease. This means that symptoms such as exhaustion could be due to other illnesses.
The researchers recruited 4,378 participants aged 18 to 64 who tested positive for Covid between December 2020 and August 2022 and were symptomatic.
Patients older than 65 years were excluded to rule out “age-related” diseases that could contribute to ME/CFS.
The average age of participants was 38 years and approximately 68 percent of patients were women.
At each three-month follow-up, about one-third of participants in both groups reported at least one of the following five symptoms: post-exertional malaise (feeling tired after minimal physical or mental activity), unrefreshing sleep, fatigue, orthostatic intolerance (difficulty standing or sitting upright), and cognitive impairment.
This suggests that patients who did and did not have Covid had a similar presentation of symptoms.
The most common symptom in both groups was unrefreshing sleep.
“Our findings suggest that COVID-19 is no more likely than other acute infections to be associated with ME/CFS and that acute illness in general may be associated with the chronic symptom burden of ME/CFS,” the researchers wrote.
The research had several limitations, including the possibility of self-reported symptoms and false-positive results.
However, the research adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that long Covid may be exaggerated or debunked.
A major study by researchers in the US, UK and Denmark has said the risks of long Covid have been “greatly exaggerated” and the condition is “too broadly defined”.
Other experts have argued that the condition is “indistinguishable” from other post-viral illnesses.
The new study was published Wednesday in JAMA Network Open.