Millions of people around the world are believed to suffer from long COVID yet little remains known about the condition – though research has recently proposed several theories for its cause.
People comprise between 10 and 20 percentContracting parties coronavirus are estimated to have long COVID symptoms – most commonly fatigue, breathlessness, and a lack of mental clarity dubbed brain fog – months after recovering from the disease.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), based in the USA, is a US-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. According to estimates, there are almost 145 million people around the globeAt least one of the above symptoms were present in 2020 or 2021.
Europe alone had 17 million COVID-related symptoms within three months of infection. According to IHME modelingThe following are the recommendations: World Health Organization(WHO), published earlier in the month.
Hans Kluge, WHO Europe director, stated that millions of people cannot continue to suffer silently. He urged the world to take urgent action to find out more.
Researchers have been racing to catch up but the vast array – and inconsistency – of symptoms has complicated matters.
According to ACDC, more than 200 symptoms have been linked to COVID. University College London Study.
‘Fatigue in The Background’
Olivier Robineau is the coordinator of long COVID for France’s Emerging Infectious Diseases research organization. “There are no symptoms specific to long COVID. But it does have some characteristics that fluctuate.”
“Fatigue remains in the background,” he told AFP, while the symptoms “seem to be exacerbated after intellectual or physical effort – and they become less frequent over time”.
We do know that patients who had more severe first cases, such as those who were hospitalized, are more likely get COVID. The IHME.
Multiple leads have been pursued by researchers to discover the cause of this condition.
Study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases in September found that COVID’s infamous spike protein – the key that lets the Viral into the body’s cells – was still present in patients a full year after infection.
The researchers suggested that this could be due to viral reservoirs remaining in certain people. This could potentially cause inflammation that could lead long-term COVID-like effects.
If they are right, a test could be developed to identify the spike, potentially leading to one of the great and elusive goals of long COVID research – a clear way to diagnose the condition.
Their findings were not confirmed by any other research and many other causes have been suggested.
“Data not very solid yet”
One theory is that tissue loss from The immune system is permanently disrupted by severe cases of COVID.
Another possibility is that The initial infection can cause tiny blood clotsThis could be due to COVID symptoms.
Robineau explained that “for each one of these hypotheses the data isn’t very solid yet”.
He said that it is very likely that there will not be a single cause for long COVID.
“The causes could not be the only ones. They may be related or succeed in one another, or they could be different in different people.
It is still not clear how to treat this condition.
The Hotel-Dieu Paris hospital has offered long COVID patients a half-day treatment program for the past year.
Brigitte Ranque runs the protocol CASPER. She said, “They meet an infectious diseases specialist, a psychiatrist and then a doctor specializing sports rehabilitation.”
According to her, “The majority of symptoms can be attributed in our experience to functional somatic conditions.” These are chronic disorders like chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia with no known cause.
Ranque stated that cognitive behavioral therapy is a psychological approach used often for these syndromes. It can be used in conjunction with supervised physical exercise to treat long COVID.
“The patients are returned three months later. They are generally better. She said that more than half of them are cured.”
“But around 15% did not improve at any rate.”
