Long COVID, also known as 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 serious, long-term impairment of functioning and a wide variety of symptoms, including fatigue, cognitive impairment – called “brain fog” -, shortness of breath and pain.
Almost anyone can endure long COVID, adding up 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 disease can persist for years. Many other people who developed COVID for a long time before the vaccines arrived 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 review study also found that a wide diversity of biological mechanisms are involved, including resistance of the original virus in the body, alteration of the general immune response and microscopic blood clotting, even in some people. having had a mild initial infection.
There is still no proven remedy for long COVID, and existing disease control focuses on tactics to relieve 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 to locate 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, the study’s lead author and a professor in Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences. “Various mechanism-based remedies are being tested in study trials. If they prove 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-distance carriers’ – other people who have been in poor health 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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