At least 65 million people Trusted Source around the world have long COVID, a condition where they continue to experience COVID-19 symptoms for months after their symptoms originally start.
The most common symptoms of long COVID are fatigue, dizziness, mobility issues, sleep problems, cognitive impairment, and brain fog or inability to concentrate. These types of lingering symptoms can have a profound impact on a person’s life. A study published in June 2023 found more than half of people with long COVID reported their work, home, social, and private lives were severely impacted by the symptoms, with fatigue being the main problem. Scientists are still unsureTrusted Source as to why some people develop long COVID and its symptoms while others do not. Now researchers from the Amsterdam University Medical Center are helping to provide some answers with their new study — recently published in the journal Nature CommunicationsTrusted Source — that found the fatigue experienced by those with long COVID has a physical cause.
Prof. Michèle van Vugt, professor of internal medicine at the Amsterdam University Medical Center and co-lead author of this study, told Medical News Today she and her colleagues decided to look for a physical cause of the tiredness experienced by people with long COVID because of the impact it has on their lives.
“Those long COVID patients used to be like you and me totally integrated [into] society with a job, social life, and private life,” Prof. van Vugt explained. “After their COVID infection, for some of them, nothing was left because of their extreme fatigue. And this happened not only in one patient but many more — too many for only [a] psychological cause.” Past studies report that fatigue is the most common symptomTrusted Source reported by people who have long COVID.
A study published in December 2023Trusted Source found that people with long COVID self-report persistently continuously low levels of health-related quality of life, as well as a high level of disability and declined levels of physical and mental health. And research published in April 2023 Trusted Sourcereported that fatigue caused by long COVID may cause structural changes to the brain.
