Angela Samuel of Hyde Park hospitalized with COVID-19 from March 20, 2020 to June 12, 2020, and is still battling fatigue and breathing. Research conducted at Rush University Medical Center and other training hospitals across the country aims to find answers as to why COVID reasons such persistent adverse effects.
Tyler Pasciak LaRivière / Sun-Times
Angela Samuel died after being inflamed with COVID-19 in March 2020.
She was in a coma for more than a month and was hospitalized for about 3 months.
On two occasions, his mother, siblings and other members of the family circle were told: You set up the funeral.
“I’m grateful to be here,” says Samuel, 55, of Hyde Park. “When you have a moment of possibility in life, you have to kiss it. “
Despite his return, he remained too weak to return to work at the Cook County Revenue Department until the following year. And he suffers from shortness of breath and fatigue.
Most other people were infected with the virus absolutely within four weeks. But some suffer lingering effects, a phenomenon called prolonged COVID. These are the other people Dr. Robert Weinstein is looking for answers to help them.
“People who have it can tell it’s pretty miserable,” says Weinstein, an infectious disease expert at Rush University Medical Center.
So little is still known that the government doesn’t even have a definition of prolonged COVID, calling the symptoms, which come with fatigue, shortness of breath, memory problems, muscle pain, and loss of taste or smell, “consequences” of the virus. .
Since the early days of the pandemic, Rush doctors, in collaboration with researchers from seven other primary training hospitals across the country, have sought to uncover the cause and trends of long COVID through government-funded studies, work that promises answers, at least, for Samuel and others with the long COVID.
They hope it will take years to find many of the answers. One big complication, Weinstein says, is that “prolonged COVID is a single condition. “
But the paintings have also yielded some ideas.
A key point researchers have reached is that they strongly believe that vaccines not only help prevent death and other worse outcomes with COVID, but also likely help avoid long-term symptoms related to prolonged COVID.
“It’s one of the benefits of vaccination that’s rarely well deserved,” says Dr. Michael Gottlieb, an emergency physician at Rush, who was the principal investigator of a study published in January.
Dr. Michael Gottlieb, an emergency physician at Rush University Medical Center, says vaccination obviously turns out to mitigate the effect of prolonged COVID.
Tyler Pasciak LaRivière / Sun-Times
Gottlieb and Weinstein conduct extensive COVID studies involving 6,000 patients in Chicago and across the country, under the name INSPIRE, a kind of acronym for Innovative Support for Patients with SARS-CoV-2 Infections.
The closely watched studies began with Rush, Yale and the University of Washington and have expanded to include five other training hospitals across the country. Patient recruitment for the studies was recently closed.
The Rush team needs to be more informed about the long-term effects of COVID and is also looking to identify any racial and socioeconomic points that may be contributing to symptoms.
Why some other people are faster than others in the face of widespread viruses has been a thorny question for medical researchers for more than a century, since the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, Weinstein says.
With COVID, persistent effects may be only 10% to 25% of all patients. That’s still a lot of other people suffering from, given that more than a hundred million other people in the United States alone have become inflamed with the virus to date.
“I see patients affected by long-term effects, in addition to persistent fatigue, cognitive changes, and shortness of breath,” Gottlieb says. “We want to work to better perceive and treat those symptoms over the long term. “
You should also do so if others have symptoms that stem from the stress of living through a pandemic. Other studies have suggested that depression, alcoholism, and drug addiction occurred after isolation and worries caused by the coronavirus.
“A lot of other people are suffering after this pandemic,” Weinstein says.
COVID has long been a unique disease, but “people who have it can tell it’s pretty miserable,” says Dr. Robert Weinstein (center), an infectious disease expert at Rush University Medical Center.
Abundant
Another recent study, separate from INSPIRE and led by researchers at the University of Arizona, suggests that other people with chronic conditions, such as autoimmune diseases, would possibly have a hard time triumphing over the lingering effects of COVID. Autoimmune diseases are an umbrella term for a style of diseases that confuse the body’s immune system, telling it to attack healthy cells, leading to debilitating situations like rheumatoid arthritis.
All these studies aim to obtain benefits for other people like Carlos Olvera. Before 2020, the Chicago resident says he stayed active even though he had rheumatoid arthritis, going to the gym six times a week. Then, in September 2020, he contracted COVID. Il hospitalized 3 times, needing oxygen the first two trips.
Two and a half years later, he says he is still short of breath and has gained 50 pounds since he became ill. You can climb one ladder, but two is a challenge.
“I’m just here to normalize my breathing with new medications,” says Olvera, 49.
Carlos Olvera had severe COVID-19 before he could get vaccinated and still suffers from prolonged COVID symptoms, such as shortness of breath.
Pat Nabong / Sun-Times
He no longer suffers from the memory loss he suffered for two months. “I’d do anything right after someone finishes speaking,” he says.
Olvera, a trained biologist, works for Rush, overseeing a program that provides translation for non-English speaking patients.
He continues to consult with experts and remains hopeful for himself and others that ongoing studies will get to the bottom of the long mysteries of COVID.
“In my opinion, it’s temporary,” says Olvera. It is helping me that I am in physical care. For long-haul flights, it is case by case. Science takes years.
Samuel says she also had a fitness challenge before she became inflamed with COVID, and was still able to stay physically active, dance in line two or three times a week, and walk several miles a day in a park.
That is until COVID, which “like I was hit by a truck. “
Now she takes up the categories of line dancing and does physiotherapy. She is grateful for his progress.
“When I was in poor health in rehab, I didn’t think I would dance again,” Samuel says.
She still suffers from back pain, which she didn’t have before COVID. But, after suffering from “brain fog,” he says his memory is greater now.
“I still have a little fatigue, but not much,” he says. “I’m not one hundred percent, but probably 90 percent.
“Things happen so fast. I reflect on the importance of life and family. We have to live the day as if it were our last. “
Brett Chase’s reporting on the public’s surroundings and fitness is made imaginable by a grant from the Chicago Community Trust.