Inside STAT: A window into persistent post-Covid symptoms

A RECOVERING COVID-19 PATIENT RIDES AN EXERCISE BIKE TO STRENGTHEN HER MUSCLES AT A REHAB FACILITY IN GENOA, ITALY. (MARCO DI LAURO/GETTY IMAGES)

For years, DePaul and Northwestern researchers collected personal information and blood samples from healthy college students to track who contracted mononucleosis and later developed chronic fatigue syndrome — the debilitating disease also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis that’s frequently triggered by an acute viral illness. As the team was analyzing data earlier this year, reports began emerging of troubling and prolonged medical complaints following cases of Covid-19. That’s when Leonard Jason and his colleagues realized the extensive baseline data and biological materials they had gathered created a unique opportunity to investigate risk factors for illness after infection with the novel coronavirus. “There might be characteristics of individuals that might be genetic or physiological or behavioral that in some ways predispose some people toward both getting an illness and then maybe not recovering from the illness,” Jason tells STAT contributor David Tuller. Read more.