It is a hellish disease: it leads to severe, long-lasting exhaustion even when brushing your teeth, every fourth patient is no longer able to leave the house. It can be accompanied by headaches, muscle and joint pains, and even impairment of brain performance: the patient can no longer find words, for example. We’re talking regarding Chronic Fatigue Syndrome ME/CFS, from which regarding a quarter of a million people in Germany suffer. A Berlin study has now shown that a Covid-19 disease can result in ME/CFS even if the course is comparatively mild.
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An effective treatment method that leads to healing is not yet known. Only the symptoms are worked on. Director of Studies Professor Dr. Carmen Scheibenbogen urgently urges: “That’s why I can only recommend young people to protect themselves from a corona infection by getting vaccinated and wearing FFP2 masks.” Because anyone who already suffers from Long-Covid with comparable symptoms, Must have at least a 37 percent chance of getting ME/CFS.
A quarter of a million people in Germany suffer from the disease, which has hardly been researched
Carmen Scheibenbogen, head of the Institute for Medical Immunology at the Virchow Clinic, heads the Charité Fatigue Center there. It had already been visited by the first patients following a corona infection in the summer of 2020. Since then, there has been growing evidence of a causal link between Covid-19 and ME/CFS. Disc arc: “However, it is not trivial to prove this assumption scientifically. This is also due to the fact that ME/CFS has not yet been researched very well and there are no uniform diagnostic criteria.”
Through thorough diagnostics and a comparison with those affected by “Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” who had fallen ill following other infections, the researchers at Charité and the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC, Buch) were able to prove: ME/CFS can be triggered by COVID-19.
Some patients with fatigue syndrome can no longer take care of themselves
The study examined 42 women and men who had contacted the Charité Fatigue Center at least six months following their corona infection because they were still suffering from severe fatigue. Most of them might only do light work for two to four hours a day, some were unable to work and might hardly support themselves.
During the acute corona infection, only three of them went to the hospital, but did not need oxygen. 32 had gone through a relatively mild course, i.e. without pneumonia, but usually for one to two weeks with severe symptoms such as fever, cough, muscle and body aches.
Because their infection had occurred in the first wave of the pandemic, none of the 42 had been previously vaccinated. For comparison, the researchers used 19 people who developed ME/CFS following another infection.
Almost every second patient examined was out of action for a very long time following exertion
Almost half of the examined corona patients developed full-blown ME/CFS disease. The other half had comparable symptoms, but their discomfort following physical exertion was usually not as severe and only lasted for a few hours.
A device that measures the strength of a hand helped reveal the link between Covid-19 and ME/CFS. Because most of the study participants had little strength in their hands. Symptoms, laboratory values and hand strength were related. Carmen Scheibenbogen: “One of the things we found in people with less pronounced exercise intolerance was that they had less strength in their hands if they had an increased level of the immune messenger substance interleukin-8. It is possible that the reduced muscle strength in these cases is due to an ongoing inflammatory reaction.”
In contrast, in people with full-blown ME/CFS, “hand strength correlated with the hormone NT-proBNP, which can be released by muscle cells when the oxygen supply is poor. This might indicate that reduced blood flow is responsible for their muscle weakness.”
Anyone who suffers from the full picture of chronic fatigue syndrome has little hope of improvement
According to preliminary observations, the distinction between the two groups might also be reflected in the course of the disease. “For many people who have ME/CFS-like symptoms but do not develop the full picture of the disease, the symptoms appear to improve over the long term,” explains Prof. Scheibenbogen.
The new findings might contribute to the development of therapies targeting ME/CFS. Carmen Scheibenbogen: “But our data also provide further evidence that ME/CFS is not a psychosomatic disease, but a serious physical disease that can be recorded using objective examination methods.”
