October 27, 2023 – Two latest studies released this week about long COVID have shed more light on the sometimes disabling condition that affects tens of millions of individuals within the United States
Long COVID is the persistence of various symptoms of COVID-19 for months after the initial infection. Scientists world wide have been working to grasp the wide-ranging condition, from risk aspects to causes to possible treatments.
In the primary study, 31 adults underwent a lumbar puncture, also generally known as a lumbar puncture, and blood draws to search for changes of their immune systems and likewise for changes in nerve cells that would affect signaling to the brain.
Among the participants, 25 people had neurocognitive symptoms of long-COVID, similar to memory loss or attention problems. Six participants had fully recovered from COVID and 17 people had never had COVID.
Those who had COVID were diagnosed between March 2020 and May 2021. Your fluid samples were collected not less than three months after the primary symptoms.
The Results were published on Tuesday in The Journal of Infectious Diseases. Study results showed that Long COVID doesn't look like related to the SARS-CoV-2 virus entering the brain or causing lively brain damage.
According to a Summary According to the study from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, where the researchers work, “there were no significant differences between groups when analyzing blood and cerebrospinal fluid for immune activation or brain injury markers.” The results subsequently suggest that the Post-COVID condition will not be the results of persistent infection, immune activation or brain damage.”
In the second study, Norwegian researchers compared the likelihood of getting 17 different long COVID symptoms based on whether an individual was infected with COVID or not. The evaluation included 53,846 people diagnosed with COVID between February 2020 and February 2021, in addition to greater than 485,000 individuals who weren't infected. Most people had not been vaccinated against COVID-19 on the time of the study.
The results were published within the journal on Thursday BMC infectious diseases. Study results showed that individuals with COVID were greater than twice as more likely to experience shortness of breath or fatigue. They were also more more likely to experience memory loss or headaches in comparison with individuals who had never had COVID. Researchers only checked out symptoms that occurred not less than three months after a COVID diagnosis.
They also found that hospitalization increased the chance of experiencing long-term COVID symptoms similar to shortness of breath, fatigue and memory loss.
The authors noted that a limitation of their study was that in Norway all symptoms reported during a visit to a general practitioner were often not recorded, which could have affected the outcomes.