![]() ![]() In the fall of 2020, she became so fatigued that her morning yoga would send her back to bed. But months later, she experienced breathlessness and a racing heart. Retired flight attendant Jacki Graham’s bout with COVID-19 at the beginning of the pandemic wasn’t bad enough to put her in the hospital. Research shows it is more prevalent among those who were hospitalized, but also strikes a significant portion who weren’t. Long-COVID affects adults of all ages as well as children. Researchers hope their work will provide definitive answers. Or new ones may develop, lasting for weeks, months or over a year.īecause so many of the symptoms occur with other illnesses, some scientists question whether the coronavirus is always the trigger. Some of these symptoms may first appear during an initial infection but linger or recur a month or more later. While there’s no firm list of symptoms that define the condition, the most common include fatigue, problems with memory and thinking, loss of taste and smell, shortness of breath, insomnia, anxiety and depression. She believes that these clotting abnormalities persist in many patients after an initial coronavirus infection and that they reduce oxygen distribution to cells and tissue throughout the body, leading to most if not all symptoms that have been linked to long-COVID. She also found elevated levels of proteins in blood plasma that prevented the normal breakdown of these clots. In her lab at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, scientist Resia Pretorius has found microclots in blood samples from patients with COVID-19 and in those who later developed long-COVID. That can lead to blood clots throughout the body that can cause strokes, heart attacks and dangerous blockages in the legs and arms. Many COVID-19 patients develop elevated levels of inflammatory molecules that promote abnormal clotting. Some are the same ones found in people with autoimmune diseases.Īnother possibility is that tiny clots play a role in long-COVID. Susan Cheng were among researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles who found that some people who have had COVID-19, including cases without symptoms, have a variety of these elevated “autoantibodies" up to six months after recovering. That phenomenon is thought to play a role in autoimmune diseases such as lupus and multiple sclerosis. But sometimes in the aftermath, antibodies remain revved up and mistakenly attack normal cells. In a normal immune response, viral infections activate antibodies that fight invading virus proteins. Those findings must be confirmed with more research.Ī third theory is that autoimmune responses develop after acute COVID-19. A recent study in the journal Cell pointed to Epstein-Barr in the blood as one of four possible risk factors, which also include pre-existing Type 2 diabetes and the levels of coronavirus RNA and certain antibodies in the blood. One is that the infection or remnants of the virus persist past the initial illness, triggering inflammation that leads to long-COVID.Īnother is that latent viruses in the body, such as the Epstein-Barr virus that causes mononucleosis, are reactivated. Momentum is building around a few key theories. And clinics devoted to studying and treating it are popping up around the world, affiliated with places such as Stanford University in California and University College London. With $1 billion from Congress, the National Institutes of Health is funding a vast array of research on the condition. But some experts think a wave of long-COVID is likely and say doctors need to be prepared for it. ![]() It’s too soon to know whether people infected with the highly contagious omicron variant will develop the mysterious constellation of symptoms, usually diagnosed many weeks after the initial illness. Could microclots be the cause of symptoms ranging from memory lapses to discolored toes? That could make sense, since abnormal blood clotting can occur in COVID-19.Īs these theories and others are tested, there is fresh evidence that vaccination may reduce the chances of developing long-COVID. ‘Sick for a season’ A glimpse at the road to recovery after a difficult battle with COVIDĬould it be an autoimmune disorder? That could help explain why long-COVID-19 disproportionately affects women, who are more likely than men to develop autoimmune diseases.Long-COVID May unlock secrets of mysterious conditions. ![]()
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