Study: COVID-19 Associated With Quadrupled Risk of Chronic Fatigue

COVID-19 is associated with quadruple the risk of developing chronic fatigue, according to researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and University of Washington.

For a new analysis published Wednesday by the CDC in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, researchers examined the electronic health records of more than 4,500 people who had COVID-19 during 2020-2021 and more than 9,000 people who did not have the disease. They found that 9.5% of COVID-19 patients developed fatigue, which is one of the most common symptoms of long COVID, and that patients who’d been infected were 1.68 times more likely to develop fatigue than those who were not.

Researchers found the risk of chronic fatigue after COVID-19 was even greater, with patients who’d had the disease seeing a risk four times higher for the longer-term condition than those who had not.

“The high incidence rates of fatigue reinforce the need for public health actions to prevent infections, to provide clinical care to those in need, and to find effective treatments for post-acute COVID-19 fatigue,” the researchers wrote.

The researchers found that post-COVID fatigue, encompassing chronic fatigue, was more common among women than men, and was more common among older than younger people in an unadjusted model. It was also more prevalent among those with other medical conditions.

They noted that chronic fatigue diagnoses continued in the 18 months after COVID-19 detection, suggesting a “persistent effect” but also potentially indicating “a delay in diagnosing fatigue as a separate symptom or diagnosis.”

For the study, researchers said they considered chronic fatigue to be “a subset of fatigue,” and noted it was not necessarily the same as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME/CFS, which needs additional symptoms for diagnosis. They said their study criteria did, however, include diagnostic codes used for chronic fatigue syndrome.

According to federal survey data, more than 14% of U.S. adults had ever experienced long COVID as of October, and more than 4% faced some level of activity limitation due to the condition. The survey defined long COVID as having symptoms lasting three months or longer that didn’t exist prior to having COVID-19.

Long COVID symptoms can include tiredness, fatigue, difficulty thinking, “brain fog,” shortness of breath, chest pain, dizziness, menstrual changes and post-exertional malaise.