NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — You survived your COVID infection, but just when you believe your symptoms are subsiding, they never quite go away. The condition is called long COVID and patients that have it experience lingering symptoms even after the initial COVID infection has cleared. Now new research is providing some clues into who may be most at risk of getting long COVID.
From music lessons to shooting hoops, busy mother of two Jane Storie always has to stay on top of her game. But three months after she cleared a COVID infection, lingering symptoms threw her off her game.
“I was having a hard time breathing. I felt like my lungs were burning. I told my husband I think I have covid again,” Storie told Ivanhoe.
Storie was actually experiencing long COVID, a condition where she had prolonged symptoms from her COVID infection.
“We’re seeing long COVID symptoms in about ten to 30 percent of patients who had COVID infections,” said Sapna Kripalani, MD, FACP, an assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Initially, it was believed that people with severe COVID infections were the ones most likely to get long COVID, but those with mild infections are also getting it. Now researchers from Seattle have found having the presence of certain autoantibodies, which are antibodies that mistakenly attack the body in autoimmune diseases, can put you at risk. They found the autoantibodies present in 60 percent of patients with long COVID. Other risk factors include having type 2 diabetes, and a reactivated Epstein-Barr virus — a type of herpes virus. Your gender may also play a role.
“We think there is a slight predominance for women over men,” detailed Dr. Kripalani.
Knowing these risk factors can narrow down treatment for those suffering with long COVID, like Storie, who is currently getting therapy at a COVID clinic at Vanderbilt University.
A Hong Kong study found that the bacteria in your gut might also play a factor in whether someone will develop long COVID. They found COVID-19 patients with healthy gut bacteria were less likely to develop long COVID.
Contributors to this news report include: Milvionne Chery, Producer; Roque Correa, Editor and Videographer.
Sources:
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)00072-1#%20
https://gut.bmj.com/content/early/2022/01/05/gutjnl-2021-325989
PREDICTING LONG COVID: WHO’S AT RISK?
REPORT #2945
BACKGROUND: It is estimated between 15 to 80 percent of patients might experience long COVID after recovering despite if they only experienced mild symptoms during their COVID infection. Long COVID, also known as post-COVID, is a wide range of new, returning, or ongoing health problems people may experience more than four weeks after being first infected. According to the CDC, even people who did not have any symptoms can experience long COVID, which can present as different types and combinations of health problems and can range in lengths of time. Most people with COVID won’t become severely ill and will often get better within weeks of illness, and the odds of illness severe enough to become hospitalized are dramatically lowered by becoming fully immunized.
TYPES OF LONG COVID: Long COVID can be broken down into three categories. The first category is where someone does not recover completely and has ongoing symptoms because of direct cell damage from the virus. The second category is when a person’s symptoms are related to chronic hospitalization, meaning when someone is in the hospital, ICU, or bed bound for weeks. There is characteristic muscle weakness, cognitive brain dysfunction, and psychosocial stress causing post-traumatic stress disorder-like syndrome. And the third category are those cases in which symptoms appear after recovery. Based on the symptoms a person is experiencing, doctors can divide them based on their severity. Devang Sanghavi, MD, an intensivist and medical director of the medical intensive care unit at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, says another type could be if a patient had no symptoms before and is now experiencing new symptoms. However, doctors shouldn’t be quick to label it as long COVID or COVID long haulers before ruling out other conditions.
POTENTIAL TREATMENT FOR LONG COVID: A new study out of the University of Oxford is investigating whether the drug, AXA1125, could treat fatigue and muscle weakness experienced by many patients who have recovered from COVID. These symptoms are the most reported in long COVID patients, and a dysfunction in the mitochondria, the cell’s energy factories, is one likely explanation for these symptoms. Alison Schecter, MD, President of R&D at US-based biotechnology company Axcella Therapeutics, said, “In two prior successful clinical studies and in preclinical models, AXA1125 has demonstrated an ability to reverse mitochondrial dysfunction and improve energetic efficiency via increased fatty acid oxidation, restored cellular homeostasis, and reduced inflammation.” The Phase 2a trial will be a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled investigation to evaluate the efficacy and safety of AXA1125 in patients with exertional fatigue related to long COVID. The research team will be using magnetic resonance spectroscopy to assess any improvements in mitochondrial function within the skeletal muscle in long COVID patients.
(Source: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-10-29-oxford-test-potential-treatment-fatigue-long-covid-patients)
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