At the end of 2021, the World Health Organization published a clinical definition of long Covid for the first time. They explained the term as a post-Covid-19 illness in which symptoms present themselves 3 months after an infection that cannot be explained. through another diagnosis. These symptoms come with chronic fatigue, body aches, mood swings, cognitive disturbances or brain fog, and persistent breathing disorders.
In addition to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, other virus and bacterial bureaucracies are also known to cause post-infectious syndromes such as Ebola, Epstein-Barr virus, and cytomegalovirus. In a recent study published in the journal JAMA, researchers found that about 6. 2% of the rest of the people experienced at least one long Covid symptom 3 months after recovering from a symptomatic infection.
“The cause of those symptoms has been postulated to be continuous, low-grade inflammation, but the pathology remains largely unknown and remedies are primarily based on symptom relief,” the researchers wrote in their paper. Those affected are far-reaching, and specialist clinics for people with long COVID have sprung up to meet the growing need for supportive care and rehabilitation.
In their modeling study, the researchers analyzed data from 1. 2 million people from 22 countries who had Covid-19 symptoms in 2020 and 2021. They combined data from a total of 54 studies and two medical record databases. The estimated proportion of Americans with at least one of the 3 long Covid symptoms is higher among those admitted to intensive care (43. 1%) than among those who recovered in general hospital wards (27. 5%).
While only 5. 7% of Americans who were not admitted to the hospital had long Covid. Of those who were hospitalized, the estimated duration of their long Covid symptoms was about nine months and 4 months for those who were not hospitalized.
“The threat of long COVID is higher in women and in those who required hospitalization for initial SARS-CoV-2 infection, especially in those who required intensive care,” the researchers concluded.
“In general, they respond to viral infections with less severe disease and amplify superior antibody responses, but they also have higher rates of adverse reactions to vaccines and antiviral drugs; X-linked genes are thought to influence susceptibility to viral infections as well as autoimmune diseases. support autoimmune processes that play a role in the progression of long COVID,” the researchers added in their paper.
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