Long COVID, also known as a post-COVID-19 condition, is sometimes explained as symptoms that persist for 3 months or more after acute COVID-19. This disease can have effects and damage many organ systems, leading to a severe and long-term deterioration of functioning and a wide variety of symptoms, adding fatigue, cognitive impairment -called “brain fog”-, shortness of breath and pain.
Almost anyone can endure long COVID, including all age groups and children. It is more common among women and those of lower socioeconomic status, and the reasons for these differences are being investigated. Researchers have found that while some people gradually improve after long COVID, in others the illness can persist for years. Many other people who developed COVID long before the arrival of vaccines are still not feeling well.
“Long COVID is a devastating disease with a profound human cost and socioeconomic impact,” said lead article Janko Nikolich, MD, PhD, director of the Aegis Consortium at the University of Health Sciences. Professor of Array and Head of the Department of Immunobiology at the University of Alberta-Tucson School of Medicine and member of the BIO Institute5. “By reading it in detail, we hope to perceive the mechanisms and locate cure targets opposed to this, but potentially also opposed to other complex chronic diseases related to infection, such as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia.
If a user has been fully vaccinated and has their booster shots up to date, their risk of long COVID is much lower. However, 3% to 5% of the rest of the world still suffer from long COVID after an acute COVID-19 infection. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, long COVID affects approximately 4% to 10% of the U. S. adult population. In the U. S. , 1 in 10 adults who have had long COVID spread.
The synthesis study also found that a wide diversity of biological mechanisms are involved, including the persistence of the original virus in the body, disruption of the general immune response and microscopic blood clotting, even in some other people who only had an initial infection. mild. .
No remedy has yet been proven for long COVID, and existing disease control focuses on tactics to alleviate symptoms or provide rehabilitation. Researchers say there is a pressing need to expand and verify biomarkers, such as blood tests, to diagnose and monitor long COVID and find treatments that address the root causes of the disease.
People can reduce their risk of getting long COVID by avoiding infection (for example, by wearing a well-fitting mask in crowded indoor spaces), taking antivirals temporarily if they get COVID-19, avoiding strenuous exercise, and making sure they are up to date on their COVID vaccines and boosters.
“Long COVID is a depressing condition, but there is reason for cautious optimism,” said Trisha Greenhalgh, lead author of the study and professor at Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences. “Various mechanism-based remedies are being tested in study trials. If effective, they would allow us to target specific subgroups of other people with precision therapies. Treatments aside, it is becoming increasingly clear that long COVID is placing a huge social and economic burden on “individuals, families and society. ” “Specifically, we want to find better tactics to treat and help ‘long-haulers’: other people who have had health problems. ” for two years or more and whose lives have been turned upside down.
The full article, “Long COVID: A Clinical Update,” is in The Lancet.
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Materials provided through Arizona Health Sciences University. Note: Content may be superseded in terms of taste and length.
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