Knowing that ME/CFS may be the real issue in so-called ‘long Covid’ is key to treatment, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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If you’ve had Covid-19 and are still struggling with things like fatigue and pain months later, the virus may have triggered ME/CFS, the new term for chronic fatigue syndrome. Peter Rowe, a ME/CFS expert at Johns Hopkins, says the good news is there are several options for managing it.

Rowe: Unfortunately I think people have not been paying much attention to ME/CFS in the general medical world over the years, but we’ve learned how to treat these orthostatic disorders at least in the majority of patients we can provide some medication that helps control blood pressure better, normalize it, normalize the heart rate and get blood flow up to the brain more effectively. The approach I hear about a lot in the post-Covid clinics though isn’t really focusing on that as much as I think it needs to.  :30

Rowe says if you’re being seen in a post-Covid clinic and things aren’t improving, it could be that ME/CFS is the culprit. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.