Reconceptualizing rehabilitation research via an enactive framework and a radically interdisciplinary cross-analysis: a study protocol on fatigue in post COVID-19 condition (PCC).

OBJECTIVE

To present a radically interdisciplinary research approach to ill-defined symptoms, with a focus on fatigue as a major symptom of post COVID-19 condition, where multiple and, to date, rarely combined approaches may yield a fuller understanding of these symptoms.

DESIGN

Protocol for a mixed-methods study comprising an interdisciplinary cross-analysis.

PATIENTS

35 persons with post COVID-19 condition and severe fatigue were included, and 35 age-, sex-, and educationally matched controls who recovered from COVID-19 without post COVID-19 condition.

METHODS

Participants were assessed by a multidisciplinary research team as follows: physician assessment; blood and urinalysis; spirometry and physical performance tests; neuropsychological tests; structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging; extended immunological tests (cytokines); and qualitative phenomenological analysis of interviews. Data will be analysed in accordance with established methods in each of these research fields and by a cross-analysis methodology developed from within an enactive framework. This framework encompasses a focus on neuroscientific, physiological, and experiential aspects of the person as a living being in their sociocultural world.

CONCLUSION

The biopsychosocial model needs to be implemented in research according to methods that allow radically different research paradigms, typically seen as incommensurable, to inform each other in a non-reductionist manner. One application of such an approach is therefore described.