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The intense clinical effort unleashed during long COVID has resulted in more than 24,000 clinical publications, making it the most studied physical fitness in 4 years of human history.
Long COVID is a term that describes the constellation of long-term effects on fitness through infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. These range from persistent respiratory symptoms, such as shortness of breath, to debilitating fatigue or brain fog that limits people’s ability to work, to life-long conditions such as heart failure and diabetes.
READ MORE: New Long COVID Guidelines Aim to Help Doctors Identify Mental Health Symptoms
I’m a medical scientist and have been deeply immersed in the study of long COVID since the early days of the pandemic. I testified before the U. S. Senate. As a U. S. expert witness on long COVID, I published articles on the topic and was named one of the hundred most influential people in healthcare through Time in 2024 for my studies in this area.
During the first part of 2024, a multitude of clinical reports and articles on long COVID have clarified this complex situation. These include, in particular, data on how COVID-19 can still wreak havoc on many organs years after the initial viral infection, as well as new evidence on viral patience and immune disorder lasting months or years after the initial infection. .
At the beginning of the pandemic, the SARS-CoV-2 virus seemed to be wreaking havoc basically on the lungs, but researchers soon discovered that it affected many organs in the body. Photo via Benoit Tessier Reuters.
A new study that my colleagues and I published in the New England Journal of Medicine on July 17, 2024 shows that the risk of long COVID has decreased over the course of the pandemic. In 2020, when the dominant ancestral SARS-CoV-2 strain and vaccines were not available, about 10. 4% of adults who contracted COVID-19 developed long COVID. By early 2022, when the omicron variant predominated, this rate had fallen to 7. 7% in unvaccinated adults and 3. 5% in vaccinated adults. adults. In other words, unvaccinated people were more than twice as likely to develop long COVID.
READ MORE: Years After Pandemic Began, Scientists Still Seek to Prolong COVID
While researchers like me do not yet have concrete figures on the rate in mid-2024 due to the time it takes for long-term COVID cases to be reflected in the data, the number of new patients entering long-COVID clinics term has been comparable. to 2022. .
We found that this decline is the result of two key factors: vaccine availability and adjustments in virus characteristics, which made the virus less likely to cause severe acute infections and may have simply reduced its ability to persist long enough in the human body. cause chronic diseases.
Despite the lower threat of long COVID, even a 3. 5% threat is substantial. New and repeated COVID-19 infections are leading to millions of new cases of long COVID, adding to an already staggering number of other people suffering from the disease.
Estimates for the first year of the pandemic suggest that at least 65 million people worldwide suffered from long COVID. Along with an organization of other leading scientists, my team will soon publish updated estimates of the global burden of long COVID and its impact on the global economy through 2023.
Separately, a new major report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine points out all the health effects that make up long COVID. The report commissioned by the Social Security Administration to understand the implications of long COVID on your disability benefits.
It concludes that long COVID is a complex chronic disease that can cause more than two hundred fitness effects across all structural systems. These come with a new onset or worsening:
Long COVID can affect others across the lifespan, from children to the elderly, race, ethnicity, and baseline fitness. It is important to note that more than 90% of people with long COVID-19 had mild COVID-19 infections.
The National Academies report also concluded that a prolonged COVID generation can lead to the inability to return to work or school; poor quality of life; decreased ability to perform daily activities; and decreased physical and cognitive functions for months or years after the initial infection.
READ MORE: These 12 symptoms can define long COVID, according to a new study
In addition, fitness disorders caused by COVID-19 can persist for years after the initial infection.
A large study published in early 2024 showed that even people with mild SARS-CoV-2 infection still experienced new COVID-19-like fitness disorders in the third year after initial infection.
These findings parallel other studies that appear to indicate that the virus persists in various organ systems for months or years after COVID-19 infection. And studies show that immune responses to infection are still evident two to three years after a mild infection. Taken together, those studies may explain why a SARS-CoV-2 infection years ago can continue to cause new fitness disorders long after the initial infection.
WATCH: People living with long COVID show how the disease has replaced their lives
Significant progress is also being made in the pathways by which long COVID wreaks havoc on the body. Two early studies in the United States and the Netherlands show that when researchers transfer autoantibodies (antibodies generated through a person’s immune formula and directed against their own tissues and organs) from other people with long COVID to healthy mice, the animals begin to enjoy long periods of time. symptoms. COVID-like symptoms, such as muscle weakness and poor balance.
These studies recommend that an immune reaction believed to be guilty of generating those autoantibodies may simply be the cause of long COVID and that eliminating those autoantibodies may hold promise as potential treatments.
Despite overwhelming evidence of the widespread dangers of COVID-19, many publications recommend that it no longer poses a risk to the public. While there is no empirical evidence to support this claim, this incorrect information has permeated public discourse.
The data, however, tells a different story.
COVID-19 infections continue to outpace flu cases and cause more hospitalizations and deaths than the flu. COVID-19 also causes more serious long-term health problems. Minimizing COVID-19 as an innocent disease or equating it with the flu does correspond to reality.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Ziyad Al-Aly is a leader and progresser in the VA St. Healthcare System. Louis and clinical epidemiologist at the University of Washington.
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