- A new study in Nature Communications confirmed skeletal muscle abnormalities in Long COVID and ME. The study, which furthered past research on post-exertional malaise from the same research group, compared various exercise tests and biopsies of people with Long COVID and ME to results from people who underwent 60 days of strict bedrest, as well as results from controls. “There are indications of abnormalities in muscle fibers, energy production, and oxygen supply,” lead researcher Rob Wüst said in a press release. People with Long COVID and ME “should not be treated as if they have merely lost their fitness. Future studies and diagnostics must take this into account.”
- A large genetic study in Nature Medicine found evidence that fibromyalgia is a central nervous system disorder. Researchers analyzed genetic data from 2.56 million people, comparing around 54,000 people with fibromyalgia to controls. They found 26 loci for the disease, or specific locations on a chromosome where variations on DNA are linked to the increased chance of disease development. Though fibromyalgia has a higher prevalence in women, the researchers did not find a sex difference in the genetic architecture. “These findings establish a firm biological basis for a long-debated condition,” the researchers concluded. The study’s biggest limiting factor was its primarily European cohort, which could limit how well the findings apply to people of other ethnicities.
- Black people in the U.S. are less likely to be diagnosed with Long COVID compared to white people, according to a new study in Health Affairs. Researchers evaluated the electronic health records of 2.4 million Americans diagnosed with acute COVID-19 between 2022 and early 2023, using the ICD-10-CM code for Long COVID (U09.9) as the primary outcome. The researchers found less than 1% of each ethnicity group in the study had a Long COVID diagnosis, and stated that their findings were “likely an underestimate of the true magnitude of diagnostic bias.”
