Prevalence and correlates of chronic fatigue syndrome and post-traumatic stress disorder after the outbreak of the COVID-19, Simani et al, 2021

Open access, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13365-021-00949-1

 

A very small sample to draw population wide conclusions, also is there any guarantee that people catching Covid-19 and being admitted to this one hospital are representative of a normal population.

I am also puzzled that they don’t mention in the abstract the unambiguously physical sequelae of Covid-19 relating to heart, lung and neurological issues.

 

This looks like the first study that tested for ME/CFS six months after COVID-19.

Unfortunately, they didn't do a proper medical examination as most case definitions of ME/CFS require. They simply used a questionnaire where patients could indicate the severity of each of the Fukuda-criteria symptoms.

Baraniuk has previously used that approach and found that approximately 2% of patients met the Fukuda criteria (most likely a severe overestimate considering not all requirements of the diagnostic criteria were met).

In this Iranian study on COVID-19, 2.5% met the ME/CFS definition Baraniuk used previously. The authors write about this:

 

Um, OK, it doesn't increase the risk (as per their results) but given that Iran has reported 1.45m infections, an additional 29k ME patients is not an insignificant problem to deal with (assuming 2% prevelance).

 

There are multiple differences between the populations studied by Baraniuk and the Iranian study so their prevalences might not be directly comparable unless there are some huge differences (e.g. 5-10 times higher in the post-COVID-19 population). That wasn't the case here and I suspect that's what the authors mean: the 0.5% difference falls within the uncertainty of their comparison.