Trial Report Examining well-being and cognitive function in people with long Covid and ME/CFS, and age-matched healthy controls, 2024, Sanal-Hayes

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002934324002730

The American Journal of Medicine
Available online 13 May 2024
In Press, Journal Pre-proof

Clinical Research Study
Examining well-being and cognitive function in people with long Covid and ME/CFS, and age-matched healthy controls: A Case-Case-Control Study

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjmed.2024.04.041
open access

Abstract
Purpose
Well-being and cognitive function had not previously been compared between people with long COVID and people with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS). Therefore, this study examined well-being and cognitive function in people with long COVID (∼16 months illness duration; n= 17) and ME/CFS (∼16 years illness duration; n=24), versus age-matched healthy controls (n=16).

Methods
Well-being was examined using several questionnaires, namely the Health Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS), Post-exertional malaise (PEM), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), European Quality of Life-5 Domains (EQ-5D), MRC Dyspnoea, Self-Efficacy (SELTC), The Edinburgh Neurosymptoms Questionnaire (ENS), General Anxiety Disorder 7 (GAD-7), and Patient Health Questionnaire 9 (PHQ-9). Cognitive function was examined using Single Digit Modalities Test (SDMT), Stroop test, and Trails A and B. These were delivered via a mobile application (app) built specifically for this remote data collection.

Results
The main findings of the present investigation were that people with ME/CFS and people with long COVID were generally comparable on all well-being and cognitive function measures, but self-reported worse values for pain, fatigue, Post-exertional malaise, sleep quality, general well-being in relation to mobility, usual activities, self-care, breathlessness, neurological symptoms, self-efficacy, and other well-being such as anxiety and depression, compared to controls. There was no effect of group for cognitive function measures.

Conclusions
These data suggest that both people with long COVID and people with ME/CFS have similar impairment on well-being measures examined herein. Therefore, interventions that target well-being of people with ME/CFS and long COVID are required.

Keywords
Well-being
Cognitive function
Myalgic Encephalomyelitis
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Post-Exertional Malaise
Long COVID

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Clinical significance

Long COVID and ME/CFS cause impaired well-being and cognitive function, putting these groups at greater risk of employment and activities of daily living challenges.

People with Long COVID and ME/CFS have lower well-being but comparable cognitive function when compared to controls, which likely causes greater dysfunction in their daily lives.

As a result, accommodations for activities of daily living should be made available to long COVID and ME/CFS individuals.

 

That's interesting.

 

"Long COVID and ME/CFS cause impaired well-being and cognitive function", but "People with Long COVID and ME/CFS have... comparable cognitive function when compared to controls" and "Our cognitive function findings do not support the existing literature that suggest cognitive impairment, deficits and abnormalities in people with ME/CFS and long COVID"?

Make it make sense to my cognitively impaired brain

(not that this tiny study of a few dozen people in total is going to provide any game-changing evidence for anything anyway, but still...)

 

It's one of the most widely reported problem, and one of the most disabling. People are literally losing the ability to read and communicate, to do basic activities of daily living, and they can't find anything at all?! Any serious scientist should be able to question their own results, that if their methods are unable to find one of the most common problems reported in this population, then it's their methods that are wrong, not the reports.

Oddly enough, what this has shown is that medicine literally doesn't have a single valid method to measure cognitive impairment that doesn't involve nerve connections being cut. Not a single one, the results are all over the place.

But this really continues the systemic confusion caused by "there is nothing wrong with them". It makes otherwise smart people think, say and do foolish things that make no sense, because they reject what reality is and substitute it with some other version. It makes no sense to speak of well-being given this level of impairment, given how much we have lost. But it makes sense to them because they think we're not ill, that we're something else in between, or around, or whatever.

Frankly all this type of research makes as much sense as selective recording of people stampeding away from a threat, and arguing they must be mad because there is no visible threat on screen. It's like they can't imagine that anything can exist beyond the boundaries of the screen, they have ideological blinkers.

 

I didn’t read the study but this sounds like they just tested it one-off on mild and moderate people who might have been experiencing adrenaline which helps cognitive function.

No accounting for PEM or for home/bedbound severe patients would be a likely explainer to why cognitive impairment is not found.

 

The Cognitron/GBIT study found measurable, significant post-Covid cognitive impairment with more than 100,000 participants (and that didn't even include a more severe cohort). These researchers trying to say they've disproved that on the basis of 50 people doing a Stroop test is just sad.

 

Those tests don't seem to be standardized enough to matter, though. If it were a validated test, I can't see how it would be disputed, but it hasn't made a dent for the most part. They have a lot of interpretation behind them, are not anywhere near as valid as basically anything done in engineering fields, with repeatable experiments.

The biggest factor is still probably the whole "yeah, sure cognitive impairment, but it could be anxiety/depression/stress/aliens". It's hard to see how any progress can be made out of ambiguous results when there's always this easy excuse to dismiss anything anyone doesn't feel like it's true. Psychosomatic ideology is seriously acting as a capstone on medical progress, way too much like the sophons in the 3 body problem (an imaginary technology capable of blocking all experiments in physics, essentially blocking humanity from progressing further).