August 2024 Newsletter

CBS News Philadelphia reports on how special clinics in the U.S. are treating millions of Americans with lingering COVID-19 symptoms. Long COVID is high among underrepresented populations and Mount Siani Hospital’s Long COVID Clinics are looking to expand treatment of long COVID symptoms to address those populations. Click on the video to watch.

Spectrum News 1 reports that a study released by Nature Medicine showed 400 million people have experienced long COVID globally. They report that health problems can last for weeks, months or even years after initial infection with the COVID-19 virus. As of March 2024, the U.S. CDC and Prevention’s Household Pulse Survey found that 6.7% of U.S. adults have long COVID.

Long COVID is a multi-system disorder that affects the cardiovascular system, the nervous system, the endocrine system, the immune system, the reproductive system and the gastrointestinal system. Long COVID affects people of all ages from children to senior adults, as well as people from different races and ethnicities, sexes and genders. The most common symptoms of long COVID are brain fog, fatigue, tachycardia (abnormal rapid resting heartbeat), and malaise (a general feeling of illness). It was reported that individuals who received the COVID-19 vaccine before becoming infected with COVID or who took antivirals while they were infected with COVID had a lower risk of long COVID.

Individuals who were reinfected with COVID were more at risk of long COVID and it was reported that cumulatively, two infections created a higher risk of long COVID than one infection and three infections created a higher risk than two infections. In addition, reinfections with COVID also make already present long COVID symptoms worse. 

Long COVID can be a challenge to identify in patients because it is a new disease. Long COVID symptoms can negatively affect someone’s life such as preventing them from attending school or work, or in general, making everyday tasks a burden. Currently the only way to diagnose someone with long COVID is to take a detailed medical history of the patient and have them take a physical exam to understand their symptoms, in addition to getting laboratory work, such as blood and urine tests, to rule out other causes.

There is no current biomarker in the body that identifies long COVID. Therefore, it is vital that researchers find a way to rapidly diagnose long COVID. A National Institutes of Health (NIH) supported study using the RECOVER Adult Cohort, where 19% of the study population had long COVID, found that routine lab tests may not be useful in making a long COVID diagnosis. According to researchers, repeated blood and urine lab tests, done at baseline and at 12, 24, 36, and 48 months, did not detect significant differences in biomarkers between those with prior COVID infection and those without. Researchers concluded that more research needs to be completed to develop new laboratory testing to identify long COVID in patients. 

New research led by Yale School of Medicine’s Akiko Iwasaki, PhD, supports that autoimmunity may contribute so some patient's long COVID symptoms. Autoimmunity is when someone's immune system targets its own body. In the study, researchers gave healthy mice antibodies from patients with long COVID and some of the animals began showing long COVID symptoms. 85% of mice that displayed heightened pain received antibodies from patients that reported pain as one of their long COVID symptoms. 89% of mice that demonstrated loss of balance and coordination received antibodies from patients who reported dizziness. 91% of mice that showed reduced strength and muscle weakness received antibodies from patients who reported headache. Understanding what causes long covid can help doctors treat symptoms. Treatments that target autoimmunity, such as B cell depletion therapy or Intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg), might alleviate symptoms in some long COVID patients by removing the disease-causing antibodies.  

U.S. News and World Report detail recent research surrounding the workforce and long covid. Research conducted at Yale School of Medicine states that 14% of working-age people with long COVID symptoms hadn’t returned to their jobs within three months of their initial infection. Dr. Arjun Venkatesh, chair of emergency medicine at the Yale School of Medicine says that 2 million people may be out of work because of post-COVID conditions and that the average age of this affected population is 40 years old. The study showed that individuals that reported five or more symptoms of long COVID were more than twice as likely to not return to work than COVID patients with no long-term symptoms. These results have economic implications because many affected individuals are unable to return to the workforce and it has been suggested that those individuals may need similar economic relief and support that the government provided during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

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