What’s lengthy COVID? What are its signs? Can or not it’s handled? Is it harmful? Researchers have some solutions, however it stays one of many pandemic’s nice mysteries.
Three years in, scientists nonetheless aren’t fairly certain why some individuals get caught with the syndrome and its cluster of debilitating signs lengthy after their COVID-19 an infection has cleared, whereas others breeze via and shortly return to a traditional life.
Partly, that’s as a result of lengthy COVID is so exhausting to pin down. For some sufferers, the primary symptom is fatigue; for others, coronary heart and respiratory issues. Nonetheless others might have frequent complications, bother sleeping, lack of style, abdomen ache, rash, muscle aches, or modifications in menstrual cycles—or perhaps a mixture of signs. One affected person might have just a few annoying complaints for a few weeks, a second seemingly everlasting discomfort.
There’s no easy system for diagnosing sufferers, no check to tie signs to COVID-19, no tablet to pop to make all the pieces go away. Scientists and the general public can’t even agree on what to name it: take your decide from lengthy COVID, post-COVID situations, long-haul COVID, post-acute COVID-19, post-acute sequelae of SARS CoV-2 an infection, and power COVID.
As a result of it’s so troublesome to diagnose, it’s additionally robust to determine how many individuals have had it, however the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention suggests about 15% of all Americans have suffered from lengthy COVID and that about 6% at the moment have it.
On the Boston College Chobanian & Avedisian Faculty of Medication and its major instructing hospital, Boston Medical Heart (BMC), researchers and clinicians are attempting to decode lengthy COVID.
In addition to treating sufferers via the ReCOVer Long COVID Clinic, they’re main the Nationwide Institutes of Well being-funded RECOVER (Research COVID to Enhance Recovery) Long COVID Study, an effort to raised perceive the situation and pioneer new prevention and remedy approaches.
Right here, Jai G. Marathe, assistant professor of medication at Boston College and Boston Medical Heart infectious ailments doctor, and Fitzgerald Shepherd, assistant professor of common inner medication and Boston Medical Heart hospitalist, break down what they’ve realized about lengthy COVID since beginning the examine final yr:
Supply: Boston University
