According to initial knowledge from a new study, one in 10 people infected with the coronavirus in the Omicron era suffered from long COVID, indicating that the syndrome remains a notable risk even in the post-emergence phase of the pandemic.
The initial discovery, published May 25 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, was based on 2231 patients who had their first coronavirus infection on or after Dec. 1, 2021, when the Omicron strain began to dominate the country.
Among them, knowledge indicates that 224 patients, or 10%, were classified as having a long COVID six months after their acute infection. The categorization was done after scientists developed their own knowledge-based definition of the syndrome, based on a series of symptoms they were more likely to notice in patients who had become inflamed with a coronavirus in the past.
The effort, the scientists said, is a vital step toward a broader definition of long COVID, which can be difficult to identify because it can’t be easily diagnosed or evaluated, unlike, say, a central attack.
“It’s looking to help us all, patients and doctors, understand: how do you know if someone has a long COVID?” said Dr. Brown. Joann Elmore, professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, who is not affiliated with the study.
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health. The firm said in a statement that the findings “are based on a survey of a very diverse set of patients and are not definitive. The effects of the survey will be compared in accuracy with a variety of laboratory and imaging tests.
The findings, if then supported through further research, would lend weight to the idea that prolonged COVID represents “a major clinical and public health problem,” like the syndrome characterized by the study authors.
“This is a morbidity,” Elmore said.
And unfortunately, it’s still complicated for patients to get treatment and locate a doctor who has understood COVID for a long time.
“We don’t necessarily have remedies that have been studied and tested,” Elmore said. “We are still waiting for science to reach us for clinical advice. And I think patients are also struggling to locate doctors who possibly even have a long COVID.
Overall, scientists tested nearly 10,000 other people, of whom nearly 90 percent had become inflamed with the coronavirus, adding other people inflamed before the Omicron era. those who had symptoms similar to those of long COVID but may not have the syndrome.
“This test was much more scientifically rigorous than the previous ones because it had at least one group,” Elmore said.
Overall, scientists observed about 3 dozen more symptoms that were found in other people who had a coronavirus infection, said Tanayott Thaweethai, lead author of the study and associate director of biostatistical studies at Massachusetts General Hospital and an instructor at Harvard Medical School.
They then used a statistical strategy to select which symptoms best differentiate other people with a history of coronavirus infection. They found a dozen: post-exercise discomfort (in which the user feels worse even after minor physical or intellectual exertion); moderate or severe fatigue; seasickness; brain fog; gastrointestinal symptoms; Heart palpitations; adjustments in sexual preference or ability; loss of smell or taste; exaggerated thirst; chronic chest pain from cough; and movements.
The researchers then assigned a score to each symptom to help diagnose long COVID. For example, post-exercise discomfort has a score of 7; Mental fog, 3; and central palpitations, 2. A combined total of 12 or more explained as carriers of the syndrome.
In an interview, Thaweethai warned that he opposes scoring criteria as a diagnostic tool and warned that a score below 12 does not necessarily mean a patient has not had COVID for a long time.
“A person whose symptoms are excluded from the scoring formula is likely still suffering from prolonged COVID and still deserving of high-quality care,” Mass General Brigham said in a statement.
As the litany of symptoms suggests, the NIH said the long COVID “can affect almost any and all tissues and organs in the body. “
“This study is a vital step in defining a long COVID beyond any single symptom,” said Dr. Brown. Leora Horwitz, director of the Center for Innovation and Healthcare Sciences at NYU Langone Health and one of the study’s authors. It can evolve over time, it will serve as a basis for clinical discovery and remedy design. “
It has been difficult to estimate the prevalence of long COVID. Previous studies have attracted participants who were already showing symptoms, so it’s difficult to say anything definitive about the percentage of other people inflamed with a coronavirus who developed a long COVID.
But an important feature of this study is the inclusion of more than 2,000 inflamed patients in the Omicron era who were temporarily identified after their initial coronavirus infection, within 30 days, and then followed for months to see if they developed a prolonged COVID.
Thaweethai said the estimate of the 10% prevalence of long COVID in the Omicron era is in line with expectations. It is unclear whether this estimate will change, given adjustments in the composition of the dominant subvariant.
Prolonged COVID can manifest itself in other ways, Thaweethai said. In one group, most patients report loss of smell or taste, but few other symptoms. But in the group, patients have many symptoms in various organ systems.
Recently, some experts were hopeful that the long COVID would fade. The belief was that it conformed less to the unusual and less serious to the Omicron era.
“I even had hope in my center that he would pass away,” said Dr. Steven Deeks, a professor at UC San Francisco who helped gather knowledge for the study.
“T masking.
But the prevalence of prolonged COVID documented in the study in the Omicron era is “higher than I expected,” Deeks said, though it’s probably “lower than I think happened in the past. “
“It’s probably a little bit of everything: the virus has evolved and would possibly be less pathogenic. It would possibly be less likely to be distributed systemically in the body,” he said. “People are now vaccinated, and that actually helps. Or, if they’re not vaccinated, they’ve already had infections, and that prepares them for what happened when Omicron arrived. People are now being treated; other people are now receiving Paxlovid, and this probably prevents long-term complications. .
In addition, it is possible that other inflamed people were exposed to less virus.
“Personally, I think what happened in 2020 in the beginning was that other people weren’t protecting themselves, they weren’t distancing, they weren’t masking themselves and then they were getting those big doses of the virus and that probably led to long-term symptoms,” Deeks said.
Knowledge from the federal survey indicates that more than a quarter of U. S. adults who were never inflamed with the coronavirus experienced prolonged COVID symptoms.
The most recent figures, collected from April 26 to May 8, also imply that about 10% of U. S. adults and 9% of Californians who have ever had COVID-19 say they are lately experiencing prolonged COVID. These figures suggest that millions of other people continue to face exhausting and debilitating symptoms.
The study published in JAMA also found that other people who were unvaccinated or those who had COVID-19 before the onset of Omicron in late 2021 were more likely to have more severe cases of long COVID. However, according to scientists, those who are up-to-date on vaccines are not guaranteed to be immune to the syndrome if they are infected.
Coronavirus reinfections “were also associated with increased frequency and severity of long-term COVID,” according to the recent study.
Some long-haul flights see their symptoms over time. Of the other people for whom the study authors have data, a third who had prolonged COVID six months after their initial infection no longer had the syndrome three months later, suggesting that a significant percentage of other people with the disease see some recovery.
But there are still others whose persistent symptoms are severe enough to become incapacitated.
Even though the COVID-19 emergency phase is over, scientists say it’s important that COVID-19 studies continue. The syndrome is difficult to treat, researchers say, and doctors need to adopt several strategies to help relieve symptoms.
Los Angeles Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer continues to listen to citizens suffering from COVID long-term.
“I frequently hear from others who suffer from prolonged COVID or who live with chronic physical conditions that create a significant threat in terms of their need for ongoing support,” Ferrer said last week. COVID-related danger phase for many, I hope we are not too tired to continue to take advantage of available resources and practices that recognize the desires of the most vulnerable people. “
The county’s public fitness branch said citizens can take action in the face of the threat of COVID-19 in addition to vaccination, such as organizations reporting outbreaks to the county. Workplaces, educational institutions, and residential staging spaces must notify the county of any group. of coronavirus infections involving at least 3 connected instances over a two-week period.
Construction sites and residential network services will also be required to report to the county if five percent of staff or citizens are positive, even if the cases are unrelated, if they have more than one hundred employees or citizens.
The company also advised that air ventilation systems at construction sites, schools and residential buildings perform total air replacement at least five times per hour in a room and use thirteen minimum power ratio air filters, also known as MERV thirteen.
“Simple movements can also aid ventilation, adding windows that open when the weather permits, employing fans, and adjusting the settings of the home’s heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems so that air does not recirculate,” the branch said.
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Rong-Gong Lin II is a San Francisco-based Metro reporter who specializes in covering statewide earthquake protection issues and the COVID-19 pandemic. The Bay Area location graduated from UC Berkeley and the Los Angeles Times in 2004.
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Luke Money is a Metro reporter who covers the latest news in the Los Angeles Times. In the past, he was a reporter and local deputy editor for the Daily Pilot, a Times Community News publication in Orange County, and before that, he wrote for the Santa Clarita Valley Signal. He earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Arizona.
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