By David Tuller, DrPH
A
new study in Nature Communications, called “Muscle abnormalities worsen after post-exertional malaise in long COVID,” caused a stir after it was published last week. The investigators identified significant biological differences after an exercise challenge between long Covid (LC) patients with post-exertional malaise (PEM) and matched healthy controls who had recovered from acute bouts of COVID-19.
The study, which was conducted by a team of Dutch investigators, has received lots of media attention as well as buzz among patients, physicians and other researchers. It has also gotten some polite pushback from Professor Alan Carson, a neurologist and a leader of the movement to increase awareness of functional neurological disorder (FND) as well as a long-time associate of Professor Michael Sharpe, a co-author of the discredited and arguably fraudulent PACE trial. Professor Carson weighed in on X—formerly known as Twitter—and raised two issues, both of which seemed to be irrelevant and non-responsive to the actual findings. As a result, his comments seemed like non-sequiturs and left the impression that he hadn’t read or understood the research in question.
It is not surprising that Professor Carson might want to raise concerns about a study documenting biological differences between long Covid patients and healthy controls. He and his colleagues have been pushing the theory that many manifestations of long Covid are “functional”—that is, driven not by underlying physiological dysfunctions but by, among other factors, anxiety, depression, excessive focusing on symptoms, deconditioning, and disrupted brain networks. A necessary corollary of this argument is that biomedical research cannot identify pathways that adequately explain the extent of the reported symptoms............