After more than two years of tracking patients who have recovered from COVID-19, a group of Chinese scientists has revealed clues that could explain the mechanisms of long COVID-19. They discovered key biomarkers that can help identify high-risk groups and expand them. a treatment.
An estimated 10 to 20 percent of other people suffer from long COVID-19 disease, characterized by persistent symptoms such as fatigue, shortness of breath, or cognitive disorders even 3 months after initial infection. global health. The biology behind this disease remains a mystery.
For the study published last week via the online journal EBioMedicine, an offshoot of The Lancet, a team of Chinese researchers studied 181 COVID-19 patients discharged from a Wuhan hospital between January and May 2020, as well as 181 healthy people of the same age and sex.
The researchers collected plasma samples from the case studies at 3 follow-up visits over the next two years and analyzed the distribution and function of blood proteins.
“We learned four modes of recovery from other biological processes among COVID-19 survivors in the two years after infection, and thus accumulated molecular data on the prospective mechanism of long COVID,” said the paper published through a study team led by Vice President Cao Bin. President of the China-Japan Friendship Hospital and a recognized expert on breathing and serious illnesses.
The other authors come with researchers from Peking Union Medical College Hospital and Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital in Wuhan, Hubei province, where the first national cases were recorded.
The effects of additional research allowed researchers to detect 23 biomarkers that appeared to be related to persistent COVID-19 symptoms. The identity of the biomarkers is to identify those at highest risk of contracting the disease and compare the effects of experimental treatments.
“In an environment where the diagnosis and treatment of long COVID is challenging, the findings propose biomarkers for more precise intervention to reduce the burden of long COVID,” the study says.
In early May, the World Health Organization declared that the COVID-19 pandemic was no longer a global health emergency, even as scientists around the world study the biological aspects related to the disease’s persistent symptoms.
An article published in September and led by Gao Fu, former director-general of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, states that prolonged COVID-19 symptoms are not unusual, lasting between one and two months in most patients. achieve a full recovery.
Wang Guiqiang, head of the infectious disease section at Peking University First Hospital, said in an interview in May that lingering symptoms after a COVID-19 infection disappear within a year for most people and there is no need to worry about the disease. .
“In the last wave of the outbreak, we did not see a massive wave of patients with a long form of COVID-19. But special attention and care should be given to older people at higher risk of developing severe disease and those with severe chronic illnesses or compromised immune systems,” he said.