In the News
Keep up to date with the latest news articles from around the world.
Articles represent the views of their authors and not ME/CFS SA. Always seek advice from a registered health practitioner before changing your care plan.
09 May, 2023
Long COVID In California: ‘A Pandemic Of Loneliness And Social Isolation And Rejection’
As many resume their pre-pandemic lives, those with long COVID struggle with debilitating symptoms. In California, there are no legislative proposals to help despite long wait times for care and expensive treatments.
08 May, 2023
Study Uncovers Reduced Exercise Tolerance And Other Changes In 'Long COVID'
A recent study published in Pulmonary Circulation assesses changes in oxygen extraction following post-acute sequelae of SARS-Cov-2 infection (PASC) syndrome, or "long COVID." PASC may affect half of patients who recover from COVID-19. One debilitating hallmark is a persistent decrease in exercise tolerance. This study, led by Inderjit Singh, MBChB, BMedSci, FRCP, assistant professor (pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine) and Hyung J. Chun, MD, associate professor adjunct (cardiovascular medicine), assessed a cohort of patients using invasive cardio-pulmonary exercise testing, which was conducted in parallel for each patient with multiplex proteomics profiling evaluating thousands of circulating proteins.
08 May, 2023
How American Health Care Has Been Failing Women For Centuries
Reading the opening chapter of Jennifer Lunden’s “American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body’s Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life,” I recognized myself: a college student beset with debilitating fatigue and diagnosed with mononucleosis that was supposed to resolve in a couple of weeks but didn’t. My illness got a name, chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), in 1988 just as I graduated college a year late. Lunden fell ill with the same condition, myalgic encephalomyelitis, the following year. Though diagnosed and named, this illness and its symptoms, along with a host of enigmatic disorders that disproportionately afflict women, were often dismissed as depression and laziness.
08 May, 2023
Clinical Improvement Of Long-COVID Is Associated With Reduction In Autoantibodies, Lipids, And Inflammation Following Therapeutic Apheresis
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are witnessing an unprecedented wave of post-infectious complications. Most prominently, millions of patients with Long-Covid complain about chronic fatigue and severe post-exertional malaise. Therapeutic apheresis has been suggested as an efficient treatment option for alleviating and mitigating symptoms in this desperate group of patients. However, little is known about the mechanisms and biomarkers correlating with treatment outcomes. Here, we have analyzed in different cohorts of Long-Covid patients specific biomarkers before and after therapeutic apheresis. In patients that reported a significant improvement following two cycles of therapeutic apheresis, there was a significant reduction in neurotransmitter autoantibodies, lipids, and inflammatory markers. Furthermore, we observed a 70% reduction in fibrinogen, and following apheresis, erythrocyte rouleaux formation and fibrin fibers largely disappeared as demonstrated by dark field microscopy. This is the first study demonstrating a pattern of specific biomarkers with clinical symptoms in this patient group. It may therefore form the basis for a more objective monitoring and a clinical score for the treatment of Long-Covid and other postinfectious syndromes.
07 May, 2023
'Every Joint, Muscle, Nerve Started Aching': People Share Their Struggles Living With Fibromyalgia
Fibromyalgia is a contested diagnosis and many health professionals believe it does not exist as a true disease, and that it is in the patient's minds, making it psychological or psycho-somatic in nature, said Saumya Pahwa, a consultant clinical psychologist.
07 May, 2023
Symptom presentation and quality of Life Are Comparable In Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome And Post COVID-19 Condition
Considerable overlap exists in the clinical presentation of Post COVID-19 Condition and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS). The current study aimed to compare symptoms and patient-reported Quality of Life (QoL) among people with Post COVID-19 Condition and ME/CFS in Australia.
07 May, 2023
Long Covid, Awakenings, And The Enigma Of Post-Viral Illness
In 1917, a psychiatrist and neurologist called Constantin von Economo arrived at a meeting of the Vienna Psychiatric Society to describe a strange malady that had been spreading sporadically through Europe. The disease - a form of encephalitis, or brain inflammation - had first appeared in Romania in 1915, and was characterised by fever, headache, intense lethargy, sleep disturbance and abnormal eye movements.
06 May, 2023
Awareness Of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Urged
OVERWORKED: Taiwanese have little awareness about the condition, even though Taiwan’s average annual work hours are the fourth-highest in the world, a doctor said.
06 May, 2023
Mouse Study Reveals An Immune Cell That May Cause Fibromyalgia
Scientists have caught a type of immune cell invading nerve cells, discovering a possible cause of fibromyalgia in an animal model of the disease.
06 May, 2023
Clinic Offers Help For COVID Long-Haulers
Canada's University of Alberta houses one of the first clinics in Alberta dedicated to helping people manage long COVID.
